Beautiful Disaster
by Billiebee3
Summary: She answered their questions quietly, calmly, and without any real emotion. And she drank the tea and ate the biscuits that they offered her seemingly every ten minutes. But everyone knew that they had no idea of the real story.
1. Chapter 1

The blonde's hand rested on her rounded belly as she softly padded barefoot through the grass that was wet from the morning dew. There should not have been anything peaceful about her return that early morning after she had been missing for two years. But like always, there was a peacefulness about Luna that was enough, in these situations especially, to deny any natural order. Her permanently surprised eyes and small, soft smile were the same as ever, as though nothing had happened. But the scars marring the otherwise lovely and perfect pale skin of hers told another story…as did the growing child in her belly.

Ginny was the first one to see her in the dim morning light, as she poured coffee and sat at the window. At first, she wondered whether the girl was real or not, or maybe some strange forest goddess. It was hard to tell Luna from one even in mundane situations with her exceedingly long blonde hair and the simple way in which she walked, as if floating. Walking up from nowhere like this through the field in the early morning certainly did nothing to help make the situation more real. Nevertheless, Ginny didn't waste any time yelling for everyone to wake up and running outside as quickly as possible from the cottage at the beach to hug the young woman.

"Hello Ginny." Luna said calmly as Ginny practically tackled her.

"Oh Merlin! Luna, we thought you were dead! Holy goodness! It's a miracle!" Ginny said, still grasping the girl as the others began to spill out the cottage door to join them.

"Wh-where were you?" Harry asked.

"Well, it's obvious, isn't it?" Hermione stated, standing back a little and annoyed with everyone for swamping the girl. "She was held captive…somewhere…" As Ron, Harry, and Ginny backed up she immediately noticed Luna's belly, but despite feeling a sudden urge to go kill something or cry or maybe take turns at both, she didn't say anything.

Harry and Ginny led her inside, while Ron hung back with Hermione. Leaning in to whisper to her from the side without taking his eyes off Luna, he said "get a load of those scars on her ankles! It sure looks like she was in for a rough time."

Hermione nodded to him, taking stock of the girl as best she could from her position. It looked as if she had been chained by the ankles, judging from the thick, angry scars that ran around them. The left side appeared to be much worse than the right.

Luna went with them, allowing them to guide her inside the cottage and into a large, overstuffed chair in the corner of the living room. She didn't say anything, but she smiled serenely and patiently waited for all of the questions that were sure to follow. It wasn't long before they noticed her belly, despite the loose fitting long sage green dress that she wore and she knew that it would take a very long time to answer all of the questions that would result.

"Are you okay?"

"Are you pregnant?"  
>"Who did this to you?"<p>

"Are you okay?"

"Where were you?"

"Who were you with?"

"Who is the baby's father?"

"Are you sure you're okay?"  
>"Does someone need to go kill the baby's father?"<br>"Are you going to keep it?"

"Have you had any medical care?"

"Are you positively certain that you are okay?"

And she answered them, quietly, calmly, and without any real emotion. And she drank the tea and ate the biscuits that they offered her seemingly every ten minutes. But everyone knew that, despite her truthful answers, they had no idea of the real story behind what had happened to the otherworldly girl.

That story wouldn't come until much later that night and Ginny would be the only one to ever hear it in its entirety. She had originally come to check on Luna one more time, to make she was sleeping soundly. Her mind was too busy, too disturbed thinking and wondering about what had happened to her friend to allow her any sleep in Harry's arms. When she found that the nymph like girl was missing from her bed, she went on a search that ended on the third story roof of the wacky little cottage.

Stepping carefully out through the window she walked over to sit next to the blonde was lying on her back and seemed to be stargazing. It was a goodnight to stargaze with the clear sky and the gentle summer breeze playing with the ends of Luna's long curly locks. For a moment she said nothing, she just reached to the hand of her friend who had been away from them all for too long. But after a while, she managed to work up the courage to ask what she so desperately wanted to know.

"What happened to you, Luna?" Ginny barely managed to choke out in a whisper, all the while staring at the scars on her friend's flesh and obviously pregnant state.

"You want to hear the whole story." Luna stated instead of asked. "You're not the only one. There is a gnome over there that seems to be quite interested as well." She pointed to an area to the side of the cottage that faced the woods with a group of several trees and bushes. Ginny did see something (a bird probably) move around through the leaves there. Luna rested her free hand over her belly and smiled sadly, moving Ginny's hand there as well. "She's kicking." She whispered in a voice that seemed much farther away from Ginny than only the foot in between them.

"She?" Ginny asked, excitedly. If the baby was forced on Luna, maybe looking at a little girl would at least be a little easier than a boy, considering.

Luna ignored her question. "The comet that flew by a few months ago, did you see it?"

Ginny sighed, wondering whether Luna's child would be as otherworldly as her mother. "No."

"It was quite beautiful." Luna commented. "Unfortunately, it seemed to disturb to some of the Blibbering Humdingers that were grazing."

"Blibdeering wha- wait a minute!" Ginny snapped her head over to look at the small blonde. "You were outside watching a comet a few months ago?"  
>"Luna nodded."<p>

"Then why are you just now back here? Did you escape and then get recaptured?" At this point Ginny was very confused.

"Perhaps I should tell you about it from the beginning. I don't believe it would make sense if I started at the comet."

Ginny eagerly nodded. "Please do."

Ginny had expected Luna to tell her the story herself then, but the girl beside her stayed quiet. She fished something out of an inside pocket of her dress and handed it to Ginny.

"I do hope that you will keep it to yourself though. Some of it is quite personal. It makes me too sad to talk about."

Ginny looked down to see a small vile in her hand and she immediately knew what Luna meant for her to do with it. "Are you sure you what me to see everything, Luna? I might see something you don't want me to."

Luna kept her peaceful face looking up at the sky while she began to sing softly to herself, seemingly out of nowhere as she caressed her belly .

"I see the moon and the moon sees me,

the moon sees somebody I would like to see,

so God bless the moon and God bless me,

and God bless the someone I want to see."

Ginny stayed quiet, listening to the muggle song she had only heard once before. Luna's voice was high pitched and airy and reminded her of one of those Disney princesses in a movie that Hermione had explained to her that the muggles play on their square boxes. It surprised her, a little, that Luna would even know the song, considering she had no muggles in her family. Her sweet and siren like voice, however, quickly removed the thought from the redhead's mind and she just listened to the otherworldly girl instead.

After a while, Ginny knew she must have dozed off while listening to Luna's singing. For when she looked over at her again, Luna wasn't there and the sweet song was gone. Ginny looked around for Luna cautiously at first, wondering where she had gone off to. The blonde was nowhere in sight. Ginny finally just decided to go back inside and end the burning curiosity she felt for whatever had happened to Luna. Pouring the teardrops into the basin, she knelt down and dunked her head under the warm liquid to see the story Luna had offered her.


	2. Chapter 2

A large grey wool blanket was wrapped tightly around the figure in front of him. I couldn't see what-or who- was underneath. The grimy snatcher who looked as if he hadn't bathed in months carried whatever it was over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes towards the family's basement. Guessing that it was someone whom Voldemort had ordered captured for information, I opened the basement door for the snatcher. I had assumed that the large, foul smelling man would carry the prisoner down stairs and place it on the floor, but instead the man suddenly swung it from his shoulders and hurled the lump down the stairs. Immediately reacting off of instinct, I quickly whipping out my wand and levitated the thing to prevent it from hitting the stone steps. Carefully guiding the thing midair down the steps, I placed it softly onto the ground at the bottom.

"What are you trying to do, you half-whit? You could have killed it! Do you know what my father would do to you if you killed the prisoner before we could even get any information from it?" To me, whoever it was inside the blanket was simply an "it". That was something I learned a long time ago. "It" was the only way to deal with what happened to them without upsetting myself. They were all half bloods and mud bloods, after all...lower than real wizards.

The snatcher merely grunted and I felt a cold hand on the back of my shoulder. "It's okay, my son. She isn't here to be interrogated, she already has been and knows nothing of Potter's or the mudblood's current whereabouts. She's here as leverage to control that idiot blood traitor father of hers and she's a blood traitor herself. It is not necessary to keep her in working order."

I turned around to my father as he spoke and nodded to him in response. "Yes, father." I began to wonder who the girl or woman was…there wasn't many that fit that description.

"Good boy. Thank you for being on guard though." With that, Lucius patted his son on the shoulder and walked away back toward his office, leaving me alone at the top of the stairs looking down into the still open basement.

My curiosity burning, I walked slowly down the stairs to uncover the body. It took a minute to undo all of the ropes that bound the heavy wool blanket around the girl, but once I did I was stunned at what I saw. It wasn't because of who it was; that much I could have easily deduced based on what my father had told me. It wasn't because of condition the girl was in either, I had already seen much, much worse. What shocked me so was how unreal she looked up close…like a porcelain doll or something. I had never been closer than several yards away from Luna Lovegood before and every other time I had seen her I had been much too distracted by the crazy things she wore to pay any attention at all to what she actually looked like. She lay there unconscious in her very uncomfortable looking contorted position on the dirty stone floor with her hair matted in blood and her skin largely bruised and still managed to look like some sleeping princess from a muggle fairytale.

Reaching out carefully I lifted the girl up from the ground and removed the rest of the blanket from her body...though why I did it I still can't be sure of. She was still wearing her Hogwarts uniform, which was unusual considering the snatchers that had caught her. I looked her body over once, slowly, taking in the beautiful alabaster skin exposed at her knees. The uniform was not ripped anywhere and her knickers were still in place, from what little I could see of them where her skirt had ridden up while I had removed the blanket. That alone made her very lucky considering her small body and pretty face and figure. The snatchers were known to have a little too much fun with some of the younger women and girls they snatched before turning them over.

Normally, I would have never sullied my hands even touching a prisoner, but Luna wasn't some half-blood like most of the others brought to our house for punishment. For all her strangeness, she was a pureblood, just like me and my family. I began to wonder what my aunt Bellatrix had in store for her once she arrived, if the girl ever regained consciousness. Deciding that I felt mildly sorry for the girl, I took out my wand and conjured a cot in the back corner of the basement room. I picked her up and carried her to it, putting her down on her back and tossing the wool blanket carelessly over the bottom half of her body. Then I turned around and left, never intending on seeing her again.


	3. Chapter 3

I didn't see her again for three weeks. The stress of being a deatheater was getting to me and I found myself making frequent trips to my family's expansive wine room. I was just outside the basement door, walking to the only thing that could possibly dull the stress of the day. It was one of those days when I needed a good glass of firewhiskey…maybe some of the eighty year old collection. That was when I heard it. At first I didn't know what it was; just that it was high pitched and sounded pretty. It even scared me a little, making me wonder whether there was some sort of ghost. Then, when I followed it to the wall of the basement, I realized that someone was singing. Not my mother, for she had been far too depressed for far too long to do anything of the sort, nor aunt Bellatrix…the voice was much too sweet for it to be possibly coming from that mad woman. None of the house elves would dare to sing. That only left one female in the house. Feeling called to the owner of the voice as if being hypnotized by a siren, I opened the door to the cellar and walked slowly down the stairs, casting a luminous charm on my wand so that I could see in the pitch darkness down there. I could hear the sound my leather shoes made against the stone each time I took and step and it seemed to blend with the melody of the song. The words were strange… I had never heard them or the melody before.

_"I see the moon and the moon sees me_

_And the moon sees someone I want to see_

_So God bless the moon and God bless me_

_And God bless the someone I want to see…"_

I stopped several yards from the cot she was sitting in, crossed legged and still barefoot. This time, she did look worse for the wear. I wasn't sure if anyone had been feeding her at all based on the looks of things. Before that moment I had no idea that a person could even lose that much weight in only three weeks. She looked more like a ghost sitting there than she looked real. It spooked me, a little.

"Hello, Draco." She greeted as she noticed me there, in an ordinary and unsurprised voice.

"What are you doing?" I couldn't help but demand. My voice sounded angry, but I didn't realize that I was angry until I heard it. She was singing to herself! Singing! In a dungeon in the dark while seemingly starving to death! What is wrong with this girl? She really must be just as mad as people are always saying. She didn't even look sad or angry…or even scared.

She reached out to me and began to stand up, but immediately she began to falter a bit. I quickly caught her, more out of reflex than a desire to help her. While she was pressed against me, she gave me a look of…sympathy. The look unsettled me. It was as if her silvery blue eyes could see straight through me. I had never seen anyone look at me like that before and it made me incredibly uncomfortable.

"You're stressed." She stated calmly. I felt my face scrunch into disgust and quickly helped her back down onto her cot to get some distance in between us. "You should try to relax more; stress is known to attract the wackspurts."

I backed up a little to take a look at the crazy loon. She was so thin and dirty that I almost felt like I was looking at a prisoner in Azkaban instead of a young girl that I had gone to school with. I didn't know what to do. I kept getting flashes of how I had seen her at school before…with her skipping happily down the hallways wearing her crazy radish earrings. She was a nut, but she had always been a nice girl…even to me the few times I had ever come into contact with her. She was a year younger than me, so we didn't have any of the same classes.

Suddenly, I needed some air. I was having an attack of conscious that I wasn't used to. The idea of this little loon literally wasting away in the dark basement below my feet just seemed too entirely unreal to me. Feeling a sudden panicked need to getting away from her, I turned and ran up the long flight of stairs, down three hallways, and out the first available exit that I came to. I stopped only when I reached the courtyard's marble railings that overlooked the lake. Grasping on to the railing, I gasped for air. It was like I had been holding it without my knowledge so long that could do nothing but panic. Like I suddenly found myself a mile underwater and had to frantically swim upwards before my lungs flat out exploded. Finally, after several minutes, I caught my breath and tried to think rationally. I was very uncomfortable with the way that I was feeling.

Luna Lovegood. The name itself sounded cooky. Did she even realize that she was being tortured? That she was starving to death down in that basement? That she would never see the moon that she was singing about ever again? Realizing that I had been pacing back and forth around the marble flooring, I stopped and sat down on some steps nearby. There were things that I could do about her position, if I wanted to. I knew this. I knew that I could conjure up other things she surely needed down there, or order the house elves to start giving her more food. But the question that I was wrestling with was WHY SHOULD I CARE? What difference should it make to me if the girl starves to death? Immediately, though, I knew that I could not let this happen for reasons that I could not quite grasp within myself. She was just a prisoner. Finally, I came to a decision. I decided that the reason that it was all bothering me so much must be because of the fact that she too is a pure blood, making her not at all like the other mudblood and halfblood vermin that I was used to seeing tortured.

Finally, I made a decision. I would simply bring some food down to her and then go to bed. In the morning, surely, I would be once again capable or rational thought and all this strange guilt will go away. Feeling confident that this would fix the situation, I walked quickly over to the kitchen. All of the house elves immediately stopped what they were doing and waited for my demands.

"That prisoner down there, when was the last time anyone fed her?" Draco demanded.

The house elf closest to me immediately got down on all fours and bowed so deeply that her nose touched the ground. "Mas- Master Lucius told Milly that she didn't have to be fed. But, but Milly…" The house elf, apparently overcome with grief and guilt began bashing her head against the stone floor, seemingly as hard as she could. "Oh Master, forgive me! Milly is sorry! Milly betrayed the Malfoy name!"

Wanting to get information out of the stupid elf before it killed itself, I kicked her so that she would land on her back side and could no longer bash her head. "Did you feed her?" I asked.

"I fed her just very little, Master. I couldn't bear it! Milly is sorry! Milly gave the girl water and breadcrumbs from Milly's rations. Milly must be punished!" She started trying to hurt herself again and I quickly jerked her up.

"Stop trying to hurt yourself. I don't care that you fed her! I want you to go get some food for her now and bring it to me!"

The elf scrambled to its feet and ran over to the stove, quickly fixing a large tray and running it over to me before dropping to all fours again at my feet. "Oh thank you Master! Thank you!"

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever." I huffed out, annoyed by how pathetic house elves were. I took the tray and walked back down to the basement.

This time there was no singing and, when I got down there, the blonde seemed to be asleep. Conjuring up a chair to sit in, I sat for a moment and let my eyes roam over the girl once again. Her almost white, waist long hair needed washing and her lips were chapped. The wool blanket that I had left with her covered much of her body but I could see her face and one of her hands. Her skin was a pale and beautiful alabaster. I didn't even realize it until it had happened, but I reached out to her hand and touched the cold skin. She moved a little and I flinched, moving my hand back to keep to myself. Finally, I just decided to leave the tray on the chair and go. As I got up, however, she blinked her eyes open a little.

"You look like shit." I said to her, lying through my teeth even though she was in bad condition.

"Good morning, Draco." Her bell like voice greeted me.

I pushed the food tray into her lap as soon as she sat up. "It's not morning. It's like eleven thirty P.M." I stated dryly, wondering once again what the hell I was doing.

"You brought a picnic!" She exclaimed gleefully. "Are we going outside to eat?"

I looked at her again like she was crazy. "Why would I let you go outside?" I asked, wondering what on earth would make her think of something as random as outdoor picnics when she was starving to death.

"Well, if it is eleven thirty at night, I should think that the moon would be high and beautiful. Also, the cold air helps to fend off those wackspurts that were bothering you…"

I had no idea what the hell a wackspurt was, or really what she was even talking about. However, she was obviously weak from her time down here and it wasn't like I couldn't handle her if she tried to run off. Suddenly, I was tempted. Her spontaneity was a bit off fresh air in an otherwise very dried up house. Plus, somehow I knew that she wouldn't try to run off anyways, though I knew that I would if I were her.

"Can you walk?" I asked, genuinely curious.

Luna blushed a little in the dark room. The color on her cheeks looked lovely. "With some help, I'm sure."

Whether it was out of guilt, or curiosity, or just plain loneliness, I felt myself caving in. "Fine." I did the best I could to make my voice seem more cross than I was. Honestly, I was feeling somewhat amused by the whole thing. I leant down and wrapped my arm around her waist to help her support her weight. As we walked I could feel every rib and bone and it occurred to me how much she looked like someone with anorexia. I decided to take her out to the gardens to the back of the mansion. It wasn't the closest to the basement, but I thought that she would probably like that place best. As we walked, she never said a word, but looked all about the hallways and everything we passed. To the casual observer, one would think she was trying to memorize the layout for escape purposes, but I could clearly see from my position up against her that, in fact, she seemed to be looking at the patterns in the ceiling and floor. I didn't even try to imagine why.

When we got outside, I helped her to sit on a nearby bench while I called for a house elf to prepare a picnic blanket for the two of us. Within a minute it was done and the food spread was out on it as well. I came over and helped Luna to stand up and walk over to the blanket. In all honesty, I was very tempted to just pick the girl up and carry her. It would have been easier, but somehow that felt too intimate considering the situation. We sat and I talked with her a little as she politely ate, very much unlike how I had expected her to. One thing that particularly stuck out to me while we were out there was just how intently she seemed to stare at the moon, as if there were something other than just the big pale circle to study about it. It reminded me of the song I had heard her singing earlier. I decided to ask her about it.

"That was an old song that my mother used to sing to me. She learned from a muggle friend of hers." She finished off her tea and biscuit and leaned back to lie down on the blanket, facing the moon. "I always found it very comforting, you know."

"You're going to die." I said coldly, straight out, testing whether anything could break the peculiar girl's calm.

Her expression never even changed. "Humans do have a habit of that, don't we?"

"Are you mental?" I asked her, becoming frustrated at her lack of self preservation.

"Not that I know of, but everyone sure does seem to ask that a lot." Luna commented, as if seriously considering the possibility. "But, if I am just going to die here, I don't see that it makes that much of a difference."

I didn't know what to say to that. It was an odd statement and I would end up spending the rest of the night obsessing over it. After a while, Luna had gone back down to the basement quietly and without any signs of resistance. She seemed like she was just resigned to her fate. The problem was that I wasn't. It was four thirty in the morning and I was still tossing and turning in my silken sheets. Something had to be done. I had gone through every possibility that I could think of to try to get her off my mind and out of my conscious. The girl was like a damned unicorn…she was just so bloody pure and good and beautiful that I couldn't stand to see her wither away without it driving me mad in the process. It was as though Satan himself had sent her here purely to torture me. Well, either him or Lord Voldemort…if there was any difference between the two. She was every single thing that I wasn't.

There were only two solutions that I could come up with to keep her alive on any semi permanent level though, and one of them would surely get both me and my family killed. So I chose the other one, although I knew it would only grant me a one way ticket into hell.


	4. Chapter 4

Without getting a single minute of sleep, I walked straight into my father's office at seven thirty the next morning.

"I'm busy, Draco." Was the first thing he said to me.

"It will only take a minute, father." I assured him.

Throwing down a stack of papers onto his desk he looked across the room at me crossly and motioned for me to sit. I obliged. "That Lovegood girl in the basement, are there any instructions from the dark lord about how we should handle her?" I asked, carefully.

"No. Why do you ask?" He responded slowly, obviously curious as to what I was getting at.

I simply raised an eyebrow at him. "She isn't likely to try to make any escape attempts. She is a pureblood and I have been…deprived of a lot of things I have become accustomed to at Hogwarts of a…um, social variety."

My father laughed a little at me. It was interesting. The entire time I had grown up with the man I could count the number of times I have seen him laugh on one hand and here he was laughing. "My son, if you wanted the girl all you had to do was ask. She is a very pretty little thing, isn't she?"

I felt myself blushing a little and my father looked genuinely amused. "Put a charm on her so that she cannot leave the property and do what you want with her, just keep her out of everyone else's way. Maybe you can even get the little traitor to come around to our way of seeing things. That really would be interesting, wouldn't it? I can see the look on her father's face now."

I nodded and managed to smile. Standing up, I immediately left the office as my father bent back over his paperwork again and headed for the basement. Not much in the mood to actually go down there again though, I decided to ask one of the elves to apparate her to my room instead. By the time I walked in, she was already there, sitting in the middle of the mahogany floor with one of the books from the book case in my room in her hands. I closed the door behind me and locked it.

"Luna?"

She looked up from whatever book she had been intently reading from. "Yes?"

"I've talked to my father and decided that you are going to stay with me instead of in the basement. That doesn't mean that you aren't still a prisoner. While you are here you will do whatever I say or I will send you straight back down there to starve. Do you understand?"

Luna nodded, her facial expression looking almost bored.

I felt like a pedophile standing there. I halfway wondered whether she understood or whether she was too busy trying to find patterns in the ceiling. Twenty minutes ago I had every intention of doing whatever I wanted with the little fairy and now I couldn't even stomach making her touch me. Deciding that whatever lunacy I was feeling could only be solved with some actual sleep, I decided to get a bath and simply have her lay down with me. Whatever I would do or not do after that I could figure out then. Pulling out my wand, I cast a charm on her to keep her confined to the Malfoy grounds. It was easy enough. Then I bent over to pick the feather light girl up and carried her into my large bathroom.

"You expect me to sleep with you?" She asked, as if it were just some small observation. I didn't know what to say. I had never raped anyone before and didn't suppose that I much had the stomach to start now, but I would be damned if I didn't get anything out of this arrangement. She was still my prisoner to do whatever I wanted with. If it had been any other death eater's house she would have probably been raped to death by now.

Calmly, she continued after it became clear that I wasn't going to say anything. "I'd rather not, you see, I haven't any experience in that department and I was hoping to save it for someone I fall in love with later on."

"You'll probably never live to see anyone outside of this house again, let alone anyone you could fall in love with." I stated truthfully. I didn't mean it as anything cruel, really, but I still felt like a bastard for saying it. I lowered her down into the enormous bathtub.

"Take your clothes off. You smell like a wet rodent." I managed to demand of her.

She blushed a little and looked down. "No." She finally whispered, still sounding totally calm.

I felt defeated. I turned around and, stripping in full view of her, walked into the glass shower next to the tub by myself. "Your bath better be done by the time I get out or I'll finish it for you." I warned, secretly hoping that I didn't look too much like the giant push over I seemed to be turning into. I turned on the water and heaved a sigh of relief the hot steam brought to me. After a short moment, I heard the water in the tub turn on. I could see her outline through the warped glass, though not any details and I knew that she could see mine was well.

I needed to think quickly. As a death eater I should be torturing this girl. She is a blood traitor! I told my father that I was taking her out of the basement where she would otherwise die for one reason. I had to assert my authority over her. After all, she was a prisoner of the dark lord. She should be terrified, not sitting somewhere singing muggle children's songs! On any account, she certainly shouldn't be affecting me this way. I shouldn't feel sorry for her. I shouldn't want to help her or desire her. She was a loon, I told myself. A crazy, blood trading loon.

But then, I was very sleepy and there was no reason to do anything drastic right now…before I could at least get some sleep…was there? I decided not.

I felt another wave of sleepiness and, after rinsing the soap off my body, I turned off the shower. I knew that there was no way that the girl could be done with her bath yet, as my shower had only lasted about five minutes and she would be trying to wash off weeks of filth. Stepping out of the shower, I dried off with a towel and, without looking at the girl, walked into my bedroom to retrieve some boxers from my dresser. As I came back into the bathroom with nothing on except that, I almost had a heart attack. I looked at the bubble filled bathtub to see no one. The tub was empty and Luna was nowhere to be seen. As I neared closer to the large whirpool tub I felt increasingly more idiotic by the second. Immediately, my eyes scanned the room for my wand. It was still on the counter exactly where I had foolishly left it before my shower. She could have taken that and killed me with it! This was what a lack of sleep got me.

Bending over the tub closely to try to see through the thick suds and failing, I was about scared out of my wits when her head popped back up just an inch or so in front of my face. Letting out a surprised yelp, I fell backwards and landed on the cold tile floor on my ass.

"Are you alright, Draco?" Luna asked with only her head peeping out of the suds, her surprised eyes staring at me curiously with a look of genuine concern.

If not for that strange look I would have been swearing out a long string of expletives at her for making me think she had escaped and then making me fall, but I found myself unable to even cuss the girl. She looked as innocent as a little five year old caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Again, I began to feel like a pedophile. How old was she, again? She was only one year below me. I shook my head and went to fetch her a towel and washcloth, as I had just realized that I had not given her one before. I tossed her the washcloth and it landed on her face before she brought a hand up from under the thick suds to retrieve it.

"Do you think that you added enough bubbles to your bath, Luna?" I asked sarcastically. It looked as though she had a four inch barrier of them over the water. If the idea was to hide her body from my view, she did a good job.

"Have you ever heard of the bubble theory in quantum mechanics?" She asked casually, instead of answering my question, bringing one of her forearms out of the water to scrub with the cloth.

I shook my head "no".

"It's quite interesting." Was all she said as she continued to wash herself in modesty.

I began to get frustrated at her. "What exactly do you think is going to happen here, Luna?" I angrily asked her, trying desperately to make her understand the situation that we were in and the parts that both of us were expected to play in it.

She stared into a large bubble that rested in her hand. "It's so beautiful, isn't it? I love how, at every angle, you can see a different range of colors. It's never quite the same as I expect." She blew at it and it floated from her palm into the air in between us. I watched it float there for a moment. "Eventually it will pop, of course, but it's still nice to enjoy while it lasts, don't you think?" The bubble landed on my forearm, where my dark mark had been taken and popped. I began to wonder whether she meant it as a metaphor or is she was just babbling like the loon I thought she was.

I sighed and called up the house elf that had been sneaking her food before, ordering it to get Luna some sort of night gown to sleep in. Luna smiled as the house elf apparated into the bathroom.

"Hello, Ma'am." Luna greeted her, cheerfully. The house elf smiled genuinely at her and bowed to me before apparating away and then quickly bringing back a white, knee length satin slip.

"Will this do, Master?" Milly asked, bowed over on the floor in front of me. I nodded and waved her away without paying much attention to what the thing looked like. It was obvious to me at this point that Luna's damned virtue was probably safer here as my supposed love slave than in a bloody nunnery. It wasn't that she wasn't incredibly desirable, or that I didn't have the power, or that I feared the consequences, it was just that she somehow made it where I plain couldn't do it to her. I had no way of explaining it other than that. Here she was as my prisoner, naked in front of me in my bathtub and I just couldn't do it.

I Just Couldn't Do It.

I waited for her to finish her bath in silence. She took her time and, when I suspected that she was through, she began to stare about the room again. Trying to gather some authority, at least, I walked over and fished my hand down under the water to find the drain. My hand didn't come into any contact with her body at all and I wasn't sure if I was disappointed at this or relieved. Once the water had started draining, I got out the towel and, despite every male hormone in my body telling me to wait until I had clear view of her naked body, I reached over and handed it to her to wrap around herself for modesty.

"Thanks." She smiled and I suddenly didn't feel so cheated anymore. Whatever was wrong with me or whatever wandless power she held, I only knew one thing as I lifted her little body from the tub and carried her to my large bed. I was officially a push over.

Apparently sensing no danger, she rested her head on my chest as I held her. Her long wet hair smelled like wildflowers and honey…nothing like any shampoo she could have used in my possession. I used my wand to dry it for her after I had placed her on the side of the bed I didn't tend to use as much and handed her the satiny thing Milly had brought her. Without waiting for me to turn around (not that I would have) she slipped it on over her towel and then handed me the towel after she was covered up…or as covered up as she was going to get in the little satin gown, anyway. It showed a hint of cleavage, though not much, and came down to just above her knees. It was also virginal white. I laughed a little to myself at the irony of it…looking so sexy and so hands off at the same time. Maybe Luna would survive through all of this and come around to our side. Who knew? Maybe one day that body of hers would be mine for the taking. But I would probably have to find out whether she was sane enough to give a knowing consent before then, since I was apparently such a pussy.

I lay down next to her on the other side of the bed and covered us both up with my deep green silk sheet and covers. With an incredibly clear conscious (the clearest I had probably ever had in my life and really just about damn near saint like), I had expected to immediately be able to fall asleep…but it still eluded me. I tossed and turned for a bit and ended up facing the little otherworldly creature in the bed next to me...though a good bit of space was between us in my king sized bed. I couldn't believe the situation. I wanted sleep so badly and yet it still would not come. She turned around to her side to face me and gave a contented smile. Then, as if knowing that I was suffering somehow, the virgin reached out to my face and caressed my cheek for a moment. I was about to comment on her strange mixed signals when she gently pulled my head closer to her until it rested about a foot in front of her own face. Her hand ran down to the side of my neck and stayed there and she began singing again, very softly this time, in that beautiful bell like voice of hers that didn't quite sound human.

"I see the moon and the moon sees me,

the moon sees somebody I would like to see,

so God bless the moon and God bless me,

and God bless the someone I want to see.

Over the mountains over the sea

Back where my heart is longing to be

Please let the light that shines on me

Shine on the one I love"

Before she could even finish the song, I had drifted fast asleep.


	5. Chapter 5

When I awoke, we were both in the exact same positions as before. I had slept more soundly than I had since before Voldemort had returned and my world had sunk into madness. I had suffered no nightmares that I could recall and I woke up feeling invigorated.

Luna was fast asleep in front of me and I took the opportunity to take a good look at her face again, since her skin was now clear of blood, dirt, and bruises. She did look like a porcelain doll. Her pale perfect skin became just slightly rosier at the cheeks in a natural blush and her small, but well shaped lips were a light shade of pink. Her waist long hair contrasted a lot with her unusually long eyelashes and her almost unnoticeable eyebrows. There was certainly a charm about this odd girl. She reminded me a lot of some painting I had seen as boy in a museum in Greece of an ancient goddess. I searched for the name of the minor and largely unknown Goddess in my mind…Pandia- the Goddess of the full moon. With a name like Luna it certainly fit well enough. In the picture she had looked damn near identical to the girl in front of me. Now, watching her sleep innocently in front of me, I was reminded once again of the position we were both in.

As I lay there, staring at her, the mark on my arm began to burn and I knew I had to get up and leave. I had my family duties to perform to worry about. As I got dressed I called in Milly again.

"Wait until I'm gone and then bring up something for her to eat." I instructed her before leaving. I wanted her to eat. I didn't like looking at her being all skin and bones…she looked sickly and it wasn't attractive. At least that's what I told myself, anyway.

By the time I was able to come back, she was up, dressed in her school uniform that she must have washed in the tub or something, and sitting in my chaise lounge reading a book about magical herbs and what they can be used for. For a moment I felt relieved at the normalcy of what she was doing…until I realized that she seemed to be reading the book upside down.

"What ARE you doing?" I asked, snatching the book away from her and turning it right side up before placing it back in front of her. "No one can read like that."

Luna just looked up at me with her big silvery blue eyes and smiled. Right there the blood that had been boiling in my veins not half a second ago was placated. It was as if I could literally feel myself turn to mush. The feeling sickened me. "Well, when I was little, I liked to sit across from my father at his desk while he read articles that were to be printed in the Quibbler and so I learned to read them while they were upside down from me."

"And so you just read everything upside down?" I asked, doubtfully.

She nodded and smiled.

I let a breath out a decided to give up trying to either understand or hate her. Obviously I was incapable of either, but I couldn't seem to just take her either…so that left me feeling frustrated. I wasn't sure what to do with the loon. Clearly this arrangement was going to do nothing but frustrate me. I considered that maybe it would have been better to just take my chances leaving her in the basement.

I decided to go to the bathroom for some…privacy. When I came out feeling just marginally better, I didn't see the little blonde anywhere around my room. Knowing that I shouldn't rule out anything when it came to Luna, I checked all the nooks and crannies in my room and also the balcony before deciding that she wasn't there. Going on a hunt for her in the expansive Malfoy Mansion and grounds was going to be a long, long, long process.

Room by room I checked, quietly calling out for the girl and hoping no one else heard me. There were other death eaters in the mansion tonight and the last thing that I wanted to happen was for her to have a run in with one of them. Without a wand, especially, she wouldn't last a moment. All my sainthood wouldn't mean anything… it could even get me into trouble if one of them found out she was a virgin after my father had turned her over to me- they would be expecting… I didn't want to think about it. Thinking of the little fairy like blonde being hurt in that way was like thinking of someone shooting a puppy. She was just too damn pure for it to be bearable. I couldn't risk anyone deciding that I wasn't fit to handle her and, now that she had been brought up from the basement and the idea posed I was afraid of what might happen to her if our arrangement was ended.

When I got to the wing of the mansion where my mother's room was located I knocked on the door as a warning and walked in. "Mother?" I called. I peeped my head through the door and saw my mother waving her hand from her place on the balcony, motioning for me to come out with her. I walked to her and found her…smiling. Just when I was about to ask what the bloody hell was going on, she quickly shushed me and pointed to something moving in the expansive meadow that her balcony looked out to.

I looked to where her finger pointed to see a pale figure with long blonde hair in a school uniform dancing by herself in the middle of the field in the moonlight. She fluttered and twirled around and my comparisons of her to a forest nymph earlier suddenly seemed all too accurate. I couldn't understand how a normal witch could look so beautiful and otherworldly. Did she have veela in her genes or something? None the less, it was breath takingly beautiful to watch. I sat down on the lavish balcony chaise next to my mother and she rubbed my upper back as we both settled in to watch her.

"Bellatrix will not be pleased when she finds out her little plaything has escaped." My mother commented.

"Aunt Bellatrix…she hasn't been doing anything to the Lovegood girl. She's just here as leverage."

My mother shook her head. "She's been having a splendid time, I'm afraid, terrorizing the girl. You know your aunt. You know, Draco, I'm almost tempted to just let the girl escape. I don't think she could be much of a threat to the Dark Lord." My mother almost giggled, as if she were a teenage girl up to something that she considered very naughty. It was the happiest I had seen my mother act in a very long time. I continued watching the girl, trying to remember if I had ever heard any screams coming up from the basement. My mind came up blank.

"She's not escaping. I asked father to let me…handle her."

An odd look passed over my mother's features. I wasn't sure as she managed to cover whatever it was just as quickly as it had came, but I thought it might have been shame. Knowing my mother didn't take pleasure in such things as torture like my aunt, I decided that it was probably safe enough to clarify. "I couldn't stand seeing her starve to death. I didn't know aunt Bellatrix was torturing her too."

My mother's frame visibly relaxed, probably not wanting to think of her own son as some child's rapist.

"You shouldn't let her wander, Draco. Someone else could have easily seen her just as I did and she would be dead."

I nodded in agreement. "She seems almost unreal out there." I couldn't help but comment, trying to keep my voice sounding casual.

My mother took her turn at nodding. "It's a shame, really, how things ended up and where her family allied itself. I was friends with her mother as a child. She married down, of course, to that crazy man, but she was a brilliant witch. Though, by the looks of things, her daughter must have taken more after her father. Pity."

I was surprised to hear that my mother and hers were friends, but my mother always had been somewhat more forgiving than my father…at least of other purebloods, anyway.

"You smile at her differently than I've seen of you, Draco. Here-" She took her wand out and muttered something that looked to take some concentration, waving the wand in Luna's general direction. I turned to my mother, curiously.

"That should do it." She said quietly. "Draco," She addressed me as if giving me instructions on how to complete my potions homework "next time you find yourself looking for the girl, try to visualize her in your mind." Apparently waiting for me to do so, she fluttered her hands at me "go on."

I shut my eyes and tried to picture the loon. Immediately, I saw her dancing in the meadow in front of us with my eyes shut, though I had not tried to picture her there. I opened my eyes and my mother smiled.

"See? You'll be able to see wherever she is, next time. But do try to make sure to keep her away from the others. Bellatrix is not going to be happy about losing her new hobby."

I smiled and thanked her, knowing that, with Luna particularly, it would probably come in handy.

"It won't work forever." She warned. "Usually, it's used more for couples or, when you were a small child, I would use it on you. The effects fade if you don't have an emotional tie with the person you're using it on, but since this is all just temporary, it should do its service."

"You look tired, mother. You should go to bed. I'll fetch our charge."

Mother nodded to me and smiled, hugging me before I left the balcony.

I called an elf to go retrieve Luna, now that I knew where she was to tell the elf to look, and I walked back inside the house. I wanted to keep being an audience to her dancing to myself. Milly apparated her to me when I was in the wine cellar and I didn't mention being witness to her little adventure.

"I trust you figured out that you can't escape the grounds by now?" I questioned, causally, as I picked out a forty year old bottle of Merlot and began walking back towards the wing of the house with my rooms.

Luna smiled. "I knew that you placed the charm, silly." She commented. "I appreciate it that you only limited me to the grounds and not the house, you see I do love the outdoors so. It's much more pleasant to know that I can go out to enjoy it."

I furrowed my eyebrows, trying to process the fact that she was actually thanking me for killing all escape attempts she may have been capable of trying to make and damning her to this hell hole until someone eventually kills her. We walked in silence until we reached my room again. I went straight over to the large dresser, resting the wine glasses I had fetched on it and pouring a generous amount of wine into each. I handed her one and then took a sip out of my own, watching her eye hers curiously.

"Never drank before?" I guessed.

Luna smiled softly and took a very small sip. "Well, I do like to try things, but I never understood why anyone would want to dull their mind on purpose." She put her glass back down on the dresser and sat down cross legged on the edge of the bed. I drank both of our glasses and then polished off the rest of the bottle, ignoring her comment and easily thinking of dozens of reasons why I would want to dull my mind.

She merely sat there and stared at me all the while I was doing so. "You need'nt worry, you know. I won't tell on you like you're afraid of. You can tell them that you've been doing anything to me that you like. I understand how frightened you must be."

I knew that she meant it as a calming statement, but it instantly did just the opposite to me. "Excuse me, blood traitor? I'm not frightened!" I fumed, wondering where she came off thinking that she knew me or that she would dare tell me that I was afraid.

"It's my house and I'll do what I want." She had made me incredibly mad now, and I wanted, no, I needed to show her that I was in control. I had to get her to fear me as a death eater instead of trying of comfort me like a childhood friend. We were on opposite sides. If she had her way, nothing would be right in the world…but all mixed and muddled. I stepped in front of her and picked her up roughly by the waist. She was so feather light that I felt as though I was picking up a kitten instead of a nearly grown girl.

"I'm not frightened!" I barked again as I all but flung her down on the side of the bed where she had slept that morning.

"So you say." She replied, in a dreamy like voice. She didn't look scared of my outburst; in fact, she had a spaced out look that almost resembled boredom. The idea of it absolutely infuriated me. I climbed up on the bed myself and pushed her down, pinning her underneath me in a way that couldn't possibly have been comfortable and looked her straight in the eye, searching for some flicker of fear there and coming up empty.

Quickly, I unbuttoned my shirt and threw it on the floor behind me. I practically ripped off her over sweater before I finally managed to jerk it over her head. She just laid there, doing nothing to fight me or defend herself. She didn't make a sound. I decided to take it a step further. I ripped at the uniformed skirt that covered her thighs and grabbed it off her too, adding that to the growing pile of clothing on the floor. Again, I stopped to look at her eyes…there still was nothing in them other than compassion and sympathy. It was insufferable. I took her hair and used it to jerk her head to the side and expose her neck, which I attacked with fury as I vehemently jerked open the buttoned the front of her blouse. After several moments of violent kisses though, I realized that I wasn't really attacking her anymore, but crying hard into the nook of her neck.

Her hands came up from their unpinned position of either side of her on the bed and she brought them to the back of my shoulders and head, rubbing soothing circles into my skin and humming her damned song again. And we both knew that I couldn't do anything to her. I just couldn't…because, for the first time in my life I wasn't dealing with someone inferior to me, but with someone that I was inferior to…and even in my drunken state, I knew it. Luna Lovegood, with all her blood trading lunacy, was better than me and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. She continued to rub my skin as I cried uncontrollably for reasons that I wasn't sure I even understood.


	6. Chapter 6

After that moment, I knew that everything in my world had shifted. I had been so confused for so long and now as I looked at the sweet girl beneath me, everything seemed crystal clear. And it _hurt_. Luna watched the expression on my face as if she could read my mind and knew everything that was happening there. I didn't move off of her and she didn't try to make me. Instead, she traced my facial features and held my shoulders as a comfort. I didn't know what to do. Everything was so clear and…wrong. I knew that the look she had given me down in the basement- the same one that she was still giving me now, just moments after I had halfway attacked her- would change everything for me. This sweet little loon would either be my savior or my undoing. I was fairly sure that it would probably be the latter, but at that point I felt like it would make little difference. Knowing that I had long past the point at which there was any hope for saving my ego, I let myself finish crying and calmed down slowly, listening to her voice sing to me.

I see the moon and the moon sees me

And the moon sees someone I want to see

So God bless the moon and God bless me

And God bless the one I love

Over the mountains over the sea

Back where my heart is longing to be

Please let the light that shines on me

Shine on the one I love

I see the moon and the moon sees me

Down through the leaves of the old oak tree

Please let the light that shines on me

Shine on the one I love…

I listened to her voice more than the actual song as she sang and I slowly lifted my body off her once I had been able to calm down. I didn't apologize, but I did avert my eyes from her mostly unclothed body as I got up as a small offering of respect to her. Quickly, I retrieved her white night gown for her to wear as her one outfit was largely shredded. Somehow, even though I knew that she had every right and reason to hate me at that point, I knew that she wouldn't hold it against me.

In the days that followed I tried to stay away from her as much as I could. This was partially because of embarrassment and partially because I didn't know what to do with her. I wasn't used to having girls hang around my bedroom except for one purpose and my Luna just wasn't like that. She didn't particularly seem to mind her lot and once even referred to her imprisonment here as only a "mild inconvenience."

The one thing that we did always do together was to go out to the gardens every morning, just as the sun rose and before everyone else was about. It was my way of trying to give her some time outside without as much danger of drawing others' attention. She would hunt through the gardens looking in all manners of absurdity for her strange little creatures that no one else believed were there but her and her father. She took great pleasure in these little excursions and would often go into great detail telling me about the ridiculous creatures she thought might be hiding just out of sight.

While I didn't believe her for a moment, I still found her little quirks very amusing to watch. So I allowed it, sitting back on the stone benches and permitting the house elves to serve me breakfast and coffee, as I watched her run around in her kooky little outfits she made for herself with whatever materials she requested the house elves buy. I always gave them the money to get whatever she wanted because I just didn't see any reason not to if it made her happy. It helped to keep her busy, anyway, her little craft and sewing projects. She also read a lot (albeit upside down) and had already gone through four of my very thick and complex books on magical herbology, care of magical creatures, ancient studies, and even divination.

I continued to do as I was told to work towards the dark lord's goals and tried to keep quiet about my feelings toward some of it. For all my taunting and teasing at school, I never had been the type to really want to hurt anyone…especially people who I didn't even know and that hadn't done anything wrong. Still, I had to think of my family first and I knew that my place in this war depended on my loyalty and services. If I had refused anything, no matter how much I didn't want to do it, it would be my mother and father who suffer and, by extension, Luna as well.

My strategy, then, was to keep quiet, do what I'm told, and try to keep Luna out of sight and out of mind. I knew that if anyone, other than my mother perhaps, knew what her "captivity" was really like with me, both of us would be in for a slow and bloody death. So far it had been going pretty well. No one had seen Luna, at least to my knowledge, since I had taken her from the cellar except my mother, who had seen her twice. Once had been that night Luna had danced in the meadow and the other was about two weeks later. It hadn't been a big deal then either, really. My mother had knocked on the doors of my room and I had let her in so that she could bring me a new tuxedo she wanted me to wear for an upcoming social event. It was in the afternoon and Luna had been napping in a purple and neon green jumper on her side of the bed with an open herbology book resting on her flat belly. Mother had stopped on the way to my closest to look at her and I hadn't commented.

"She's too skinny. I'm going to tell the house elves to start feeding her some heavier foods." I nodded in agreement and that was all she said before she turned the conversation to how she wanted me to wear the outfit and to whom I was supposed to make sure I talked to during the dinner.

It was in March, two months, one week, and three days since I had taken Luna up from the basement when my entire world fell apart again at the arrival of some snatchers with a group of three teenagers. Two boys and a girl, to be specific. When my aunt rushed into my room to call me down, Luna had been happily painting a moving picture of some butterflies flying across a full moon. I was sitting beside her eating a yellow apple. The day had been very relaxing compared to the usual because there was no tasks I was to complete for Voldemort for the second and I found that I could just enjoy myself with Luna. But I knew the second my aunt came in that I was in trouble. The crazy woman said nothing at seeing the pair of us, but her eyes…I knew that look and when her lips contorted into a twisted smile I knew that the fragile world that Luna and I had created was going to be ripped apart.

Luna and I hadn't been touching. We weren't talking to each other when she burst in. I had never touched her again in any sexual way since that night with the wine. But despite all of that, I knew that Aunt Bellatrix had just stumbled into something that she would never walk away from without destroying. My face instantly paled and I became a little nauseated. Telling her that I would be right down and watching her close the door after leaving the room, the wheels in my head began going on over drive.

I moved to Luna and grabbed her hand, running her to the secret passage behind my room. I was about to start casting every protective charm on her that I knew when she brought her hand up to my wand to stop me.

"It won't do any good." I was about to say something to her, anything, but she put her pale hand at my lips as if to hush me, gently. "Please, Draco, don't tell them if it's him." I stared at her in shock. What was I supposed to say to that? _I'm sorry, it's either us or your best friends? _I backed away to the entrance of the passage and she just stayed where she was, staring at me with _that look_ again. I knew that I couldn't let her down. I sealed the passage closed and went down the room everyone else was gathered in as quickly as I could.

And there the Golden Trio were in all their arrogant glory. Everything that I had feared was coming to life. Harry was brought forth for me to identify. I immediately knew, of course, that it was Potter, despite whatever Granger had done to flimsily try to disguise him. For all of my shortcomings I wasn't an idiot. I walked over to him and pretended to inspect him as my family prodded me for an answer.

"I can't be sure." I finally responded lamely. My father tried to encourage me, whispering in my ear that all would be forgiven, that everything would be as it was. The sad thing was that I didn't believe him for a minute. Aunt Bellatrix said something about putting the boys in the cellar and having some girl time and the next thing I knew she had Hermione Granger on the ground, carving the word "mudblood" deep into the skin of her forearm as the girl shrieked from the pain. At least she wasn't using the cruciotus curse on her yet though. I knew there was nothing I could do for her. If I stepped in I would only get all the three of them and Luna killed. So I stood back and watched my aunt torture the know it all that I had fought with for the last several years of school. Half of me even relished it. The other half just felt a little bit sick.

When the curse started to wear off though and it became obvious to everyone that I didn't identify Harry I knew I was in deep shit. After they escaped with Dobby I knew I was in deeper shit. And then every second began to feel as though it had been slowed and I could hear each frantic beat my heart made as if it was deafening. Aunt Bellatrix went mad with rage and raised her wand at me, blaming me for their escape and calling me a traitor of the dark lord. My mother stepped in front of me, pointing her wand at her elder sister.

"Don't you talk to my son that way in my own house!" She yelled, enraged at the crazy woman. Then Bellatrix just smiled crookedly and began her cackled laugh, a laugh that would have driven any child to frightened tears at the sound and made me feel sick at my stomach in fear of what would come next.

"Did you want to impress her?" She sneered as she began circling me and my mother. "Did you think that there would be a fairytale ending? Well, I'll show you what happens to blood traitors, nephew, and it isn't fairy hunting in the garden!" With that she waved her wand and suddenly Luna appeared in her grasp with the knife in front of her neck that had just been at Hermione's moments before. "Did you think I didn't know?" She shrieked at me. I tried to control my expressions, knowing that every tiny thing I did from this point on could be the difference between life and death for Luna.

"Draco, son, what is going on?" My father yelled, sounding confused.

"Nothing, father. She is our prisoner. I don't know what you're talking about, Bellatrix." I desperately tried to sound calm and was surprised that I managed to even speak at all.

"Don't play with me boy. I know the smell of a virgin and this" she dug the knife in even tighter to Luna's neck "has not been defiled. What were you torturing her with? Daisies and love sonnets?" She screamed, her voice rising with every word. For the first time I started to regret not having the stomach to force Luna into something that one night. However horrible it would have been if it had happened would surely be nothing compared to what we were in for now.

"Sister! Are you trying to turn my son into a rapist?" My mother hissed, obviously horrified at my aunt's actions. I watched as my father silently made a decision and walked over to where Bellatrix stood, as a sign that he was with her in this. Whatever I did, I knew that my mother would try her best to protect me, so I decided not to give her a chance. I knew what aunt Bellatrix was capable of.

In an instant it was all over. I pulled out my wand and shouted a curse and Bellatrix fought with me. My mother and father pointed their wands, but never fought one another with them, both unwilling to give in but also unwilling to chance hurting one another. I knew that for all the problems in their relationship, they really did love each other. The next thing I knew it was all over.


	7. Chapter 7

At first I thought that I was dead. There was a white light searing my eyes that seemed to be blinding me. That white light was the only reason that I knew I wasn't dead. If I had been dead, it wouldn't have been a white light, but an overcoming black one to signal the arrival of the devil to get me. Hell was the one outcome I was sure of in my retched life. I tried to blink, finding it very difficult to move. When my vision finally did return to me, slowly and with fog around the edges, the first thing I saw was my mother. I looked around in a suddenly frantic search for Luna and found her on the ground halfway across the room.

"Luna?" I questioned with my dry throat cracking as I tried to form the words, reaching my arm over in her direction, though I knew that it probably seemed worse than pathetic.

She didn't respond. My aunt turned towards me with a wicked smile, walking over to me and forcibly turning my head to face the blonde on the floor, who looked unconscious.

My mother didn't move, but just looked at me with a worried laced expression. She seemed to be very uncomfortable where she was sitting behind me trying to support my weight. Her face was clearly on the verge of tears.

"Today, we are going to have a lesson, nephew. This class is called how to torture a blood traitor 101." She cackled, obviously ecstatic with the situation. My father looked on from the other side of Luna across the room. "Make sure you have him where he can see, dear sister." Bellatrix ordered my mother so that she wouldn't let me turn my head from whatever was about to happen. My mother didn't move. With that, the mad woman strolled back over to the small blonde and pointed her wand at her yelling the word "Crucio!" happily as the girl began to contort on the floor in pain as if she was having a seizure.

"Stop it!" I screamed at her, desperately searching for my wand. I finally noticed that my father had it on the other side of the room with him. My aunt looked up and over to me, ending her concentration on the curse. "We've got a real stubborn one here, Draco." She knelt down to Luna and wiped the hair out of her face, "Do you still refuse to scream for me, poppet? Poor thing…" she turned Luna's head so that she would be looking over to me "do you want Draco to help you? Is he your friend?" She taunted before beginning another maniacal laugh again at the end of her question as if it was the funniest thing she had ever heard. She screamed another Cruciotus curse at her as I could do nothing but look on in horror. By this point my mother was practically hugging my head, doing the best she could to unsuccessfully comfort me. I could feel teardrops falling onto me from her face at the situation, though probably more out of worry for me or anger at her husband and sister than for the harm being caused to Luna.

"Please, sister. Stop." My mother said in barely a whisper. I doubt that aunt Bellatrix even heard her as she picked Luna up and carried her bridal style over to me.

"Do you want her, Draco?" She asked as she neared us with Luna. She held Luna up above me. I stared at her wide eyed and without a clue what to do. "Here then…take her!" With that, the mad woman didn't hand, or even drop, but threw her down to me. I was just barely able to catch her and keep her from hitting her head on the mahogany floor as she fell. Carefully cradling Luna, I frantically began to check her for signs of injury. My mother stayed where she was and seemed to be having a one sided stare down with her elder sister, who was paying her absolutely no attention at all.

My aunt began to circle us like a vulture. "So what's it going to be, Draco? Do you want another lesson from your aunty?"

In that moment I did everything I could to simply tune her out. Luna looked up at me from her place lying in my lap and I pleaded with her through my eyes to forgive me. I couldn't lose her. "What do you have in mind, aunt?" I asked, knowing that if I didn't, Luna was going to end up dead that day and I couldn't handle the idea of that.

She smiled crookedly. "Hand him back his wand, Lucius. I think we've shown him who the adults are!" My father calmly walked my wand over to me. I took it.

"Sectumsempra!" My aunt cursed at Luna. The result was at if my aunt had been writing the word "blood traitor" into Luna's beautiful creamy skin with a carving knife. The word appeared on Luna's abdomen where her shirt had ridden up a bit. Luna didn't scream as Hermione had, but turned her head into my chest and gripped my shirt tightly as a way to silently deal with it.

My aunt eyed Luna's odd behavior as the girl still clung to me. "Maybe she's saving her screams for you, Draco," her voice and expression hinting that she meant something a lot more personal than magical torture. She motioned for me to follow her example.

I took in a deep breath, knowing what I had to do. I pointed my wand at Luna's back, which was really all I could get to at this angle with her head still buried into my chest. "Sectumsempra!" I yelled, giving the curse all I had and jerking my wand at the last second to point at my aunt and slash through her neck. In a moment, her shocked eyes bulged and she collapsed to the ground in death as her neck bled out. I quietly stood up with Luna and nodded at my mother before turning to my father. "I never did enjoy aunt Bella's lessons. You shouldn't have tried to let her take what belonged to me." Before either of them had a chance to reply, or even move, I apparated Luna and myself to the edge of the family's grounds in the woods.

There I had to pause to remove the charm I had placed on Luna before to keep her on the grounds so that I wouldn't hurt her as I carried her away without even a look backwards. For a while, I simply walked with her, knowing that my parents would never betray me to Voldemort no matter how upset they were with what I had just done. No one would come after us for a while, at least. After I had walked for a little ways, I knelt down and put Luna on the ground to examine her for injury. I wanted to say something to her…but I didn't know what. I couldn't exactly comfort her in the position I was in.

"Look, Draco! A gnome!" She exclaimed excitedly, as if everything was just fine and normal. Her finger pointed to just behind my head and I turned around to look. I didn't see anything but I did feel something like a mosquito bite on the back of my right ear.

"They're good luck you know. I was bitten by one as well at the Weasley wedding earlier in the year…" I let her finish but didn't respond to the crazy outburst, just thanking Merlin that it seemed to be a sign that she would be okay.

"Yeah…sure, Luna." I replied as I began checking over her body quite thoroughly as I didn't trust her to tell me if she did have some injury that I didn't know about. I didn't find anything except the carved in word when I pulled up her shirt as much as I reasonably could without exposing anything. Other than that all she had was several forming bruises spread around her body, probably from when she had been thrashing around on the floor during the cruciotus curses.

I looked around us in the twilight and began desperately wishing that I had my broom. Luna soon shakily stood up beside me, gently taking my wand from my hand and holding it up, as if to admire it. "I think we'll be alright." She comforted, smiling vaguely. "The woods are beautiful this time of year and I do know of a place where we can go."

I turned to her, surprised at her take charge attitude. "Don't you want to get away from me?" I asked, astounded that she had used the word _we. _I wondered whether she planned to turn me into the order. At this point, I supposed it didn't much matter, when the other death eaters found me I would be killed anyway.

She just stared at me for a moment, large eyed and looking very much like she thought I was stupid or something. "You can't stay out here by yourself. These are pine trees! There just bound to be infested with nargles!"

I just shook my head at her, thinking again about how scary it was that she was probably dead serious. "And how do you suppose we get there? If we apparate they can trace us!" I exclaimed, exasperated at her permanently positive outlook on situations that were hopeless. "Look, Luna. Let me explain this to you. I am the bad guy here and you are the victim. You were just tortured. They will torture you again if you are caught with me and people _will_ be looking for me. Go back to Potter; maybe the Weasels can protect you." I turned from her, as she just stood there with my wand and I began walking off; half of me praying that she took my advice and the other half knowing that I would die if she did.

"You don't want me to leave you, Draco. And I think it would be a very bad idea if I did." She replied honestly. "Besides, you're not nearly as horrible as you think you are."

"And how do you know that?" I asked, trying to keep my temper in check.

"Because if you were I would have starved to death already and instead here I am outside and walking through a very pleasant piece of woodland with you." I stopped in my tracks and turned to her, again unsure of what to say and finally just letting it drop after listening to her sing song explaination. Then Luna walked closer to me than and surprised me by taking my hand in with hers. She became very quiet and then slowly but deliberately began to lean up to my face on her tiptoes, still not quite able to reach by a few inches, so I bent down to meet her…and she whispered into my ear something that would forever change my views of the world.

"Don't look now, Draco, but there's a Crumple-Horned Snorkack coming up beside us." The crazy loon stayed perfectly still there and, to my own absolute shock, a large animal that looked something like a cross between a rhino and an ostrich passed right by us and even stopped to look at us like we were the unusual thing that he didn't want to scare. It was unbelievable…four or five hundred pounds, grayish with a purple tint, and a large twisted like horn on its wide nose.

Luna then simply turned and walked up to it, curtseying when she got about two yards away. "Please excuse our stares, but my father and I have been looking for you for a very long time. I'm Luna and that's Draco. Are you the Crumple-Horned Snorkack?" The creature didn't move or seem to respond and I slowly worked my way over to Luna and put my hands to the backs of her shoulders, ready to grab her if the animal decided to attack. To my astonishment, he came a little closer, took in several sniffs of us and then relaxed, bowing its head down as if to greet us.

"No wonder my father and I never found any of your kind. We always thought you would be in Sweden instead of here" she practically giggled and began to rub the area on its head over its nose. "Father will be so pleased! Would you mind paying him a visit, sir? I'm sure he would be happy to pay you with as many radishes as you would like!"

I couldn't be sure in all the madness, but I thought I saw the giant crazy looking creature nod to her and bend down in a deliberate invitation for her to climb onto his back. Immediately, of course, I began thinking back to remember as best I could about how hard I had hit my head and whether I had ever really woken up from it at all. Maybe all this was just a crazy dream… The Crumple-Horned Snorkack walked over to me with Luna on him as cargo and I shook my head, refusing to board him.

"Come on, Draco. He can take us home!" She exclaimed. I felt as if I had descended into a wonderland, but despite all rational reason that I had left, I took her hand and climbed atop the animal, closing my eyes tightly as I felt him begin to move.


	8. Chapter 8

My eyes were closed tightly for about a minute and a half when I felt the uh…animal come to a stop. Luna turned to tap me on the shoulder from the front. "Draco, we're- oh!"

I quickly snapped open my eyes to see what had happened and immediately noticed three things:

1. We looked to be in Ireland instead of England

2. There was a very strange looking house in front of us that had seemed to fall in on itself

3. Luna looked very upset

I swung down from the crumple horned snark-whatever thing and held my hands up for Luna to help her down, just grateful to be off the creature and away from my family's manor. But Luna wouldn't budge. She just stared at the house, as if in shock, and after a moment, I noticed a small single tear run down her cheek "Daddy…" She whispered. Then, it was as if she couldn't get down from the animal quickly enough and went running to the house. Abandoning all questions in my head about how we could have possibly gotten here that quickly, I turned my attention to Luna's panicked state.

"Daddy? Daddy! Dad! Daddy?" I watched her run up to the wreckage and hurried to catch up, just in case there was some danger in it. She frantically scurried through the wreckage as quickly as she could as she pleaded her father's name in a tone that was heart wrenching for me to hear. Her father wasn't there, but after several moments, she did finally find a magical note from him which read itself aloud in his voice.

"If you are looking for me, Xenophilius Lovegood, I will be staying at the Quibbler's office. If you are looking for my…daughter, Lu-Luna, she has been taken captive. If you know where she is PLEASE send me an owl to let me know! If this is Luna, then I'm okay and I love you, sweetheart. Please let Daddy know that you're okay." The strain in the man's voice to even say the name of his daughter was obvious and I hated to think of how upset he must be at the loss. As I looked at the small girl I decided that I didn't want to try to imagine what he was going through, as though I knew that I would, eventually, have to give her back and lose her myself.

As soon as she had heard the note, Luna instantly relaxed, leaning her body back to relax against mine as I stood right behind her. Pleased at this, I chanced wrapping my arms around her waist to hold her a little. After taking a moment to let all of the stress she had built up go, she borrowed my wand to accio her camera from the wreckage and then to repair the damage it sustained before taking several pictures from all angles of the Crumple Horned Snorkack before "paying" him with about thirty radishes that her odd father must have just kept in stock. The creature ate them while she got to work taking his measurements and inspecting his rhino like feet and long ostrich like neck. It didn't seem to mind and didn't look like it wanted to attack, so I just let her go about her business with the animal.

While she was busy doing that, I began to use my wand to try to set up a makeshift tent and camping area for the night. It did concern me a bit that we were in an obvious place that someone might look for her, but it was already dark and there just wasn't anything else to do about it at this point. Because I had to shift through the wreckage and reconstruct anything I needed to use, it took me a great deal of time before I finished. I was proud of the results; however, given that I had never really set anything up on my own before as it was servants' work. By the time it was ready Luna had wondered off, saying that she was going to go wash up in the creek not far to the right of where her house used to stand. I figured that meant she wanted to wash her hands or face. It wasn't a far walk to me to get her but, Merlin, the scene that I found when I did.

At first I had just intended on coming to get her, but when I saw her there in the moonlight the breath caught in my lungs and my body froze. She was sitting on the back of her legs in the shallow creek without one stitch of clothing on. Her long, wavy hair fell in front of her chest in an Eve like style, hiding her perfect chest beneath the blonde locks, as she washed herself. My breath hitched as she flipped the hair onto her back and exposed her chest to my view. She was more beautiful than any girl I had ever seen, let alone had been with. I stood, unwilling to move as I watched the droplets of clean spring water drip down her perfect beautiful skin that reflected even paler in the moonlight. She looked like a Goddess. Instantly, I began to have reactions that would have prevented me from making my presence known even if I had wanted to, so I stood for another minute watching her from the forest and taking pleasure in feeling like a very bad boy. The night air was clear, dry, and crisp…something very unusual considering we were in Ireland. She seemed to be in no hurry as she bathed herself. The scene was the most erotic thing that I had ever seen in my life.

Finally after chanting to myself that she was crazy and off limits and a virgin and that I would be taking advantage several times over in my head I was able to calm myself and I cleared my throat, making my presence known to her. She didn't jump or react very quickly as I had expected her to, but just slowly turned her head to face me with a dreamy expression, still sitting in the water.

"Come, Draco." She called softly, turning her head back away from me again to look at the moon once more.

I slowly walked over to her general area and sat on a large rock beside the stream about three feet away from her. My eyes traveling down along her back and curves and I once again had to start my chant in my head to keep myself in check. She interrupted my train of mental chanting when she leaned back towards me on one arm.

"The moon is smiling tonight. I love watching it in the sky when it is so full and round and close by. It never fails to make me feel relaxed." I looked up to where she was staring at the moon and struggled to keep my gaze there. She was certainly relaxed, alright…which made one of us. The other one of us was incredibly frustrated beyond belief and beginning to wonder whether God had sent the girl solely to test me.

"There's a poem that was a favorite of my mother's by Walter de la Mare, have you heard of him?"

I shook my head 'no'.

"My mother and I used to come out here and look at the moon every night before bed. She would sing and read stories and poems and tell me of the great wizards and witches that had come before us."

"Do you remember the poem?" I asked, wanting desperately to keep up a conversation as a distraction to her nudity.

She nodded and smiled a little.

"Slowly, silently, now the moon  
>Walks the night in her silver shoon;<br>This way, and that, she peers, and sees  
>Silver fruit upon silver trees;<br>One by one the casements catch  
>Her beams beneath the silvery thatch;<br>Couched in his kennel, like a log,  
>With paws of silver sleeps the dog;<br>From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep  
>Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep;<br>A harvest mouse goes scampering by,  
>With silver claws, and silver eye;<br>And moveless fish in the water gleam,  
>By silver reeds in a silver stream."<p>

She recited the poem slowly with a dreamy look on her face as she continued to stare into the sky until she finished and looked back at me. I could see why she liked the poem and it impressed me that she could remember the whole thing well enough to recite that way. It painted a very beautiful and peaceful scene, not unlike the current night with the moon shining onto her alabaster skin. Deciding that I had better get her back to camp before I let her drive me completely insane, I unbuttoned my shirt to take off and give to her as a towel. She smiled and stood up without taking it and then went to put on her own clothes that were lying in the grass on the other side of the stream. She put on everything as though I was not watching, though my eyes were glued to her body by this point. But she left off her shoes and carried them across the shallow water instead. I walked a few feet apart from her to try to ensure some physical distance as a way to help me keep some control over myself. The little nymph obviously had no idea what she did to me, but it was so damned sexy.

When we got to camp I laid out our makeshift sleeping pallets as far away as the tent would allow and prayed to God that I didn't have any dreams for her to overhear in the night. As I got settled though, she merely sat on her own pallet and looked down into her lap. I wasn't sure, but I thought that her expression might have been a little sad.

"What's wrong?" I asked, thinking that she was upset about her house or homesick for her father.

"I miss your room." She answered simply.

I nodded to her. "Yes, well, these pallets definitely aren't nearly as comfortable as my two thousand pound mattress, are they?" I smirked, proud of my family's financial ability to make her so comfortable that she would miss her captivity there.

She shook her head. "I don't mind that really, it's just that before I got to sleep closer to you at night. It felt very secure, being next to you. I think I'll miss it."

I gulped in a breath at her admission, now quite sure that she would be my undoing. Never-the-less, I held my cover open to her as a sign for her to snuggle in with me. Her smile lit up her face and she wasted no time skipping over and tucking herself into my chest in a spooning sort of position. We had never slept quite this close before (I had always made sure to give her at least a foot or so between us as a sign of respect), but the pallet wouldn't allow for much more space between us and I certainly wasn't going to complain. I did hope that she wouldn't notice me poking into her thigh though.

I chuckled to myself at the thought as I wrapped an arm over her waist. If this had been any other girl I would be hoping she felt my reaction at her proximity. I've always taken pleasure in impressing my partners with my size. But with Luna as innocent as she was, she would probably know no difference at all. None of that would matter and neither would my family's money or social status…or even pureblood status as she was on Potter's side of this whole thing. I didn't have one damned thing that I could impress her with other than my attempts at self control with her…but then that was one thing that I had never wanted to offer any other girl before.

It was a strange situation that I found myself. I had been telling myself that I didn't really care about her other than for some company and that I only was attracted to her for her young and beautiful body, as any man would be. Why then, had I held myself back? As I laid there with her I realized that there was only one reason for me to have been keeping myself in check through all the months she had been with me. I cared about the crazy loon. I must…otherwise I would have just let my aunt Bellatrix kill her rather than go against my own family. No…if I didn't care about the girl, there would have been no reason for aunt Bellatrix to even find issue with what I was and wasn't doing to the prisoner. Why I cared about her so much I had no idea of, other than the fact that she was just so marvelously different than everyone else I'd ever known. There was something different in her eyes than everyone else's…something I hadn't noticed until I had seen her there in the cellar starving. Something that made me want to protect her. Something that made me desperately hope that she didn't think of me as a monster.

Well…great. The situations I have found myself in these last few years really have been absurd. I was a second generation death eater who just murdered my own aunt, spent the twilight riding a crumple horned snorkack and now I was holding Loony Luna Lovegood in my arms and contemplating my intense feelings for her. If a metal could be given to the man with the most screwed up life ever it should be hanging around my neck just about now.

I settled in behind Luna as I held her. Her hair still smelled of wildflowers and honey and I didn't even try to deny my feelings for her anymore as my hand rubbed circles over her flat little stomach. It didn't wander. I didn't try to feel her up or let my hand wander down, but stayed just in the area between her ribs and hips. And I enjoyed just laying there up against her, taking in the sweet 'Luna' smell and feeling her breathe and her heart beat. I felt it when she fell asleep and I joined her not long after.

I also felt it when she was ripped out of my arms.


	9. Chapter 9

The feeling I was experiencing was sickening. It was like that type of feeling people get in their nightmares. The type where they are just standing there, watching something horrible happening and they can't move. The type where some horrible monster is about to grab you and you want to scream but you can't make a sound and you just know that it is about to get you. I tried to reach out desperately for Luna, but all I could see was aunt Bellatrix in front of me with her wand. There was nothing I could do. The panic spread through my body like the feeling of the cruciotus curse.

"Draco" I heard Luna call to me from Bellatrix's grasp. I could see her calm and serene expression, like a trusting pet lamb that had no idea that its owner was about to kill it for dinner. It only terrified me more and I choked on my sobs as I tried unsuccessfully once again to warn her of the inevitable.

"Draco." She called to me again, a little louder this time. I felt something cold touch my shoulder.

"Draco, it's alright." The calm and unknowing voice of my little loon called to me as I watched my aunt point her wand to her head.

"No, no you crazy loon! She's going to kill you!" I finally found my voice to yell just as I popped my eyes open. An unharmed Luna sat in front of me in our tent with the same expression she had in my nightmare and I realized that I had been dreaming.

"I doubt your aunt can manage that from the grave." She reassured, quietly.

I struggled to catch my breath in the dark. "I thought…I felt…"

Luna smiled softly. "I was just going to go get some water. Do you want some?"

I shook my head 'no' and watched her as she got up and began to leave the tent. Still feeling very unsettled, however, I decided to go with her and quickly scrambled to catch up.

She gazed at the stars as she walked barefoot through the grass. "You know, last year in Dumbledoor's Army, I felt like I had friends. It was nice, and I miss Ginny and Ron and Harry and even Hermione sometimes…even if she is a bit narrow minded. And my father…I really miss him a lot too…he's the only family I have, you know. But no one's ever gone through so much trouble for me as you have. I hope that, somehow, I can pay you back for all of your kindness some day." She spoke in a quiet, dreamy, bell like voice as we walked.

"Then tell me about Potter." I said simply. Big information for the war was the only way that I could hope to redeem myself with my family and with the Dark Lord at this point. If I didn't, I would probably be killed for what I had done.

Her quiet smile faded and she looked down from the stars for the first time. "I'm sorry." She whispered. "But just think of all the half bloods and muggles, like Hermione. Her kind isn't less than ours, Draco. We're all the same and I couldn't let him destroy them all. I mean, what would things be like without Hermione to analyze everything all day and still miss everything important around her…like the Crumple Horned Snarkack?" She laughed quietly "and she believes they don't exist."

"I don't care about the stupid mudblood, Luna. I care about keeping you safe. The Dark Lord is going to kill us if I don't-" Luna cut me off with her soft fingers at my mouth.

"We don't have to be afraid." She whispered. "I'm not." Her eyes sparkled with sincerity at her words, as if she was willing as hard as she could for me to believe her. I didn't for a second, but I did understand that she wasn't going to tell me or any other death eater anything useful against Potter. I didn't want to argue with her. By this point we had reached the top of the hillside where the spring originated and she bend down and cupped her hands to get a sip.

"Look, I really…care…about you." I blurted out before I could stop myself, finding myself tripping over my words in the middle and knowing that I wasn't telling her the real extent of the truth. She froze where she stood and looked up at me with a splendidly surprised expression. I watched a shy but contagious small smile spread across her lips and a pink blush appear across her otherwise pale cheeks. I couldn't help thinking how beautiful she looked just at that moment. Very slowly, I felt her hand apprehensively begin to touch mine. Without wasting even a second, I took hold of it as we began our walk back to the camp.

It was juvenile to take things this slow and not at all what I was used to. I was used to just bedding girls I was halfway interested in way before I would ever admit any sort of feelings that I did or didn't have. With Luna, though, I was willing to just go with the pace she wanted in this…whatever it was. I wouldn't really call her my girlfriend…she was just mine. My little loon. My Luna. That's all there really was to it. There was no dating or gossip or discussions as to what any of this was. She never asked where it was going like Pansy constantly had. Whatever this was, it just was. There was no going back from it. Luna was now obviously aware that I would put myself into harm's way before I let anything happen to her and I was aware that people from opposite sides in the war like us didn't have a prayer in the world of making it. Despite all that, here I was walking through the moonlight with her as she hummed her pretty muggle's tune and holding her cold little hand.

Then Luna stopped in her tracks and I noticed the sound of something behind us. Footsteps. Whipping out my wand as quickly as I could and spinning to face whatever it was, I wasted no time yelling out a freezing charm and shoving Luna behind me. Snatchers. I had never been a target of them before myself, but oh how I had hated them anyways in their disgusting crudeness.

"Your snarkack isn't still around by chance, is he?" I asked Luna nervously as I counted how many of them there were surrounding us.

She shook her head. "He left after all the radishes…"

"Petrificus Totalus!" I cursed at another snatcher whom I felt was getting too close at about ten yards away. The tall, skinny man's body instantly became rigid and he fell to the ground.

The next thing I saw was my father.

"Son, it's alright. Let's go home." He held his hand out as he approached. I looked at him warily and then gestured at Luna to him.

"We'll talk about it later, Draco. I don't want to make a fuss in front of all this-" he sneered his face and looked around to all the unbathed snatchers "filth."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "How did you know where we are?" I asked him.

"Your mother knew. Some charm or another that she has." My mind instantly went back to the night on the balcony and I remembered her telling me that she placed the same charm on me as a small child that she put on Luna for me to use.

I shrugged and looked over at Luna, who didn't seem to be as paying much attention to us as she was to something in the distance to the other side of her. The ends of her long blonde hair were waving lightly to one side in the breeze.

"What about Aunt Bellatrix?" I questioned, knowing that I must be in a lot of trouble over the whole deal.

"She's dead. Your mother's already upset enough. You will be punished, but I won't lose a son over it." He said grimly.

I only stared at him guiltily. I knew that Mother must be very upset. But what was I to do? I moved closer to Luna and made a decision. "I will not stand for Luna to be tortured." I stated firmly. "If I return she will be considered my property and you must agree not to interfere with her. If I want to torture a prisoner I will, but if I want to feed her bonbons and let her play in the garden then that is my business. Understood?"

My father sneered for a moment, but then managed to compose himself. He was not used to me challenging his authority and I had no idea what his reaction to it might be. "Why should I care about the girl if the Dark Lord doesn't?"

I let out a breath and slowly nodded. I felt Luna take my hand and, ever so gently, tug at it a little. I decided to ignore it and instead used her hand to pull her over with me as I walked forward. If my father was reaching out with an olive branch, who was I not to take it? I had to tug Luna over to my father as I walked to him so he could apparate us back. She did not seem to want to move there of her own accord, though she did not fight me as I forced her. I couldn't really blame her for not wanting to return to her prison, however gilded it might be. It wasn't exactly difficult to make her- she weighed so little.

I was expecting my father to apparate us all back home, but that wasn't the situation I found myself in when we came to our stop. Instead, I found myself in the middle of a large, dark, unfamiliar room. Even more surprising was the fact that we weren't alone. Standing to one side of the room was both my mother and Professor Snape. I looked around, feeling somewhat confused and once again pushed Luna behind me roughly by her arm, as I was not sure what they were going to do.

It was Snape that broke the silence first, with his grim expression and folded hands. "Well, Draco. You might be laboring under the delusion that the entire collection of deatheaters are impressed with you and your family's failures, but if I were you, I'd begin to take my position seriously."

I only looked at him in a mixture of shame and fear. He was right. I have let my family down and have disgraced them. My mind went back to that night at the astronomy tower with Dumbledoor. Every nerve in my body had become tight and painful and the feeling of being slightly unable to breathe as I stood up there with my wand pointed at Dumbledoor. I had managed to disarm him easily enough...physically anyways. Dumbledoor had made sure that the task would be as easy physically as it was impossible mentally. It was as if he were mocking me. As if he was trying to use reverse psychology on some crazy git standing at the edge of a bridge to get him to move away from it. He had known as well as I had that I just couldn't do it. I wasn't...I struggled for the word. It wasn't that I wasn't strong enough or brave enough or anything like that...it was some other word that I couldn't name...at least not right then. Some word too forbidden to me to ever admit even in my mind.

"I have a new mission for you, Draco. One that, I trust, you will accept if we are to keep the death of Bellatrix away from the consideration of the Dark Lord." He turned his cold stare to Luna, who I was still forcefully keeping behind me. "Levicorpus!"

Luna was immediately flung into the air upside down, as if being held up by the ankle. The spell made her dress flip up somewhat and exposed her underwear and some of her abdomen. I kept my firm hold on her wrist, though I had to adjust the angle somewhat to avoid twisting it and hurting her. She didn't seem particularly perturbed at the situation, however, and preceded to begin investigating about the room with her eyes as though the new angle somehow made everything different and new. Snape stomped over to me and grabbed me by the chin.

"I made the unbreakable vow to protect you and you damn well will pay attention to me when I address you because that vow may prevent me from doing with you what I see fit, but it's protection does not extend to Miss Lovegood. Is that quite understood?" He hissed.

I nodded quickly, having seen first hand what the man was capable of and not wishing to get Luna tortured again.

"Good. Thank you Lucius. Narcissa." He nodded towards them and, without a word, both apparated. As soon as they were gone Snape released Luna from the air and she came tumbling down to me. I struggled to catch her in time, but managed and held her bridal style for a moment before I got around to putting her down.

"Miss Lovegood. Have you changed your loyalities since I last saw you?" He asked with a strained voice.

"No," She responded in her usual dreamy voice as she wondered about the room, looking at this and that "I'm still with Harry."

Snape seemed to let out an almost indetectable breath. "And yet young Draco keeps you as his songbird in a guilded cage. What I need to know is why."

In response she smiled. "He does it for the same reason that I still sing for him...despite."

Snape rolled his eyes.

"You said you had a mission for me?" I asked, cutting off whatever snide remark he would inevitably make of her strangeness.

"Yes." He stated grimly. "I need you to steal Dumbledoor's wand out from his grave."


	10. Chapter 10

It only took me three hours to complete the mission and get back to Snape. I knew where the grave was. The task in and of itself was easy, even. But digging up the man that had been my headmaster for so many years...the man I had gotten killed on the astronomy tower...that was more difficult. I found myself unable to look at his face as I opened the casket and took the wand. I didn't have much of a choice about the situation anyways. Snape had kept Luna with him as leverage to ensure my cooperation. What I couldn't understand is why Snape even wanted the wand.

"I really can't understand how you stand the insufferable girl." He complained as I reentered his house. He had been sitting in a chair with his back to the fireplace. "She may be bright in potions class, but she is more impractical than a bloody unicorn."

"Where is she?" I demanded as I stepped toward him.

His eyes began to search me for the wand. "Give me the wand." He demanded back, even more forcefully.

I took it out from my cloak and handed it to him roughly. He inspected it with his eyes and turned it all over in his hands, examining it. Not bothering to look up from his prize he sneered the word "upstairs."

I nodded to him and went up to find her. Although Snape's house was nothing in comparison to the Malfoy Manor that I had been raised in, I still had to check into several rooms before I found my loon.

"Luna?" I questioned softly as I approached her figure lying still on a bed in the corner of a small bedroom with a lit fireplace. She was facing the wall away from me. I swept her hair away from her face as I looked down at her sleeping form. She appeared at ease and unharmed. I covered her up better with the comforter and ran my fingers through her long beautiful hair before backing away quietly and leaving the room to rejoin Snape.

Snape sat where he had been before, looking deeply troubled and drawn into thought. I sat down in the chair across from him and he suddenly rose from his place, walking towards me and using his own wand against my forehead in a legilimens charm. There was no polite way to describe the feeling. It felt as if my brain was being raped. I could feel him forcing his way into my mind and I desperately wished that I knew how to make him stop, but I didn't. I had no way to know how long I been sitting there before he was finished. Whatever he saw there, I didn't know, but he seemed quite pleased with whatever it was that he found. I wondered if perhaps he hand obliterated whatever it was from my memory so that I couldn't know.

He lowered his wand and took a few steps backwards and away from me. "I will be keeping Miss Lovegood here under my protection, Draco. You may stay with her if you wish but in return I will require complete loyalty from you. Is that understood?" Behind his usual grim expression I could almost swear I saw a grin.

I agreed.

The next six weeks went by uneasily. Snape would appear here and there in his house as he seemed to shift back and forth from Hogwarts. I followed whatever instructions he gave me, though most of it didn't seem to make any sense and a lot of it was fairly dangerous. I was lucky that Luna seemed to have a natural talent with healing spells and that very little made her upset. Once, she had to heal a giant gash that extended all the way from my elbow to my wrist from climbing a ledge as I bled all over her and she didn't even blink. Snape would watch these scenes after I returned from his missions and pump me for information, often commenting on how ironic it was that Luna was using my wand to heal rather than hex me considering her position.

I didn't let it phase me. In all honesty, everyone knew that Luna could have used my own wand to incapacitate me and escape a million times over since she had been with me, but she never had. I didn't even try to keep my wand from her anymore. There was really nothing to stop her from leaving even just physically from Snape's home either...she could have walked right out of the door anytime with nothing to hold her in and there were lots of times when she was in the house alone. In truth, I was beginning to wonder just who the captive here was.

At night there had been one major change. Ever since that night out in the tent when I had lifted my covers to Luna and held her we never had gone back to sleeping away from each other on opposite sides of the bed. Every night when I would go to lay down, usually long after Luna had drifted to sleep, I would come up behind her close and wait for her to back up into me. She always did and I would always wrapp my arms around her tiny little figure, take in the smell of her hair and kiss at the back of her head. Sometimes, she would sing her strange little muggle's song for me at night, as I rubbed at her side.

I see the moon and the moon sees me

And the moon sees someone I want to me

So God bless the moon and God bless me

And God bless the one I love

Over the mountain over the sea  
>Back where my heart is longing to be<br>Please let the light that shines on me  
>Shine on the one I love<p>

I see the moon the moon sees me

Down through the leaves of the old oak tree  
>Please let the light that shines on me<br>Shine on the one I love

I kissed the rose and the rose kissed me  
>Fragrant as only a rose can be<br>Please take the kiss that comforts me  
>Back to the one I love<p>

One night, Luna squirmed out of my arms. It was around two twenty in the morning. Thinking that she was just trying to sleep walk (which I had long ago learned the hard way that she was prone to) I tried to hold her down more forcefully.

"Draco, please." Her bell like voice requested.

Realizing that she was indeed awake I let go of my grasp for a moment. "We can go see the moon later Luna! I'm really tired. Now come back." I grabbed at her as she sat up and I felt more and more irratated. She didn't lay back down as I had demanded.

Instead she continued to silently get up, walked to the door and pressed her ear to it, as if listening intently to something that I could not hear from my place on the bed on the other side of the room. When I saw her frightened expression I knew that something must be horribly wrong. I knew that other deatheaters were in the house that night, visiting with Snape. I padded over to Luna softly and lead her away from the door and back to the bed. She didn't struggle this time but only looked as if in shock. It worried me.

I quickly got dressed and bent down in front of her in the dark room. "Stay here, Luna. No matter what happens. Here's my wand. If anyone other than me comes in here, kill them and apparate yourself away to some place even I wouldn't know about. Don't wait for me. Do you understand?"

Her pale face didn't show any signs of response, but I knew that she had heard me. I shoved my wand into her right hand that had been resting in her lap and, without thinking about it or even realizing what I was about to do until I was already doing it, I leant down and kissed her. Her small pink lips were soft and sweet and I kept the kiss very gentle. I could tell that Luna was a little bit suprised and was inexperienced, but I didn't care other than the slight feeling of guilt for taking that from her instead of letting her choose some idiot for herself, like she had mentioned wanting to save those things for. Longbottom, perhaps, or even Ron or Harry maybe. The thought turned my stomach a little. Instead, I was taking it from her. Still, she did not feel upset or even rigid in my arms, as most would when surpised, but as relaxed and sweet as ever. The only problem was that it only made me want to kiss my sweet little loon more. I didn't have time for that, so I just left her sitting there in her little white night gown with her feet dangling off the bed.

Without a word, I got up and quickly left the room, shutting and locking the door behind me. As soon as I got out into the hallway where I could hear into the dining room I could immediately tell what Luna had been so freaked out about. Around the table sat a large group of deatheaters and, at the head, Voldemort himself. Something about Snape's features became uneasy as he noticed me come in, though I came to sit beside him anyways as it was the only empty place. Apparently, the Dark Lord was ranting and raving about the fact that some mystical wand he had been searching for was missing. A wand that was exactly like the one that I had stolen out of Dumbledoor's grave for Snape. I was beginning to get very confused, though I knew to keep my mouth shut about it.

"I need something to kill." Voldemort finally said, as if he were asking for something to make him feel better. I shot a warning glance over at Snape, desperately trying to figure out what he was going to do.

I was shocked when he quickly left his seat and ushered in what looked to be a random muggle. It was a hard looking tatooed man in his forties who wore an orange prison jumpsuit. I watched Vodemort's face closely for some sign of acceptance of the offering. His face turned up into a snarl and he let out a loud breath. While he tortured the man to death I noticed something unusual. The serpent that always stayed with Vodemort wasn't there with him.

"And some people have the audacity to suggest that self respecting witches and wizards should mate with creatures like that." The Dark Lord sneered as he finished off the man slowly. The meeting dragged on while I stayed frozen in my place, too afraid for Luna and too confused about Snape to find my voice in anything discussed. Why did Snape have me get the wand and then lie to Voldemort himself about it when he knew that it was something he wanted? What was his game? Whatever it was, I didn't like it. If the Dark Lord found out I would be killed as well and as soon as I was dead the other deatheaters would be picking at Luna like vultures. She'd be lucky to die with me.

As soon as it came to a close and everyone else left I pulled Snape aside, demanding to know what was going on. To my surprise, he put a hand at my shoulder and led me back up to a sleeping Luna, stopping at the foot of the bed in clear view of her.

"Look at the girl, Draco." He demanded quietly, as though he did not want to wake her.

I did as he said. She was sleeping soundly again on her side with the comforter pulled up to her waist and her upper body exposed to the cold air with only her thin little nightgown as a barrier. Without thinking, I walked over to cover her up better and tucked her in up to her neck before returning to Snape.

"Are you in love?" The professor asked, straight out, though his tone indicated that he thought he already knew the answer.

I only blinked at him, not understanding what he wanted from me. He took the lack of response as uncooperation and drew out his wand, holding it to point at her.

"What are you doing?" I demanded, immediately taking the wand I had left with Luna from the nightstand and drawing it out to face off with him if necessary.

He raised an eyebrow at my actions. "And if I cast the killing curse on her now?" He asked almost sarcastically.

I held my wand more rigidly at him. "I don't want to kill you Snape, but if you touch her-"

"Oh calm down boy." He groaned out while rolling his eyes. He drew back his wand and put it away into his cloak. "I was only trying to illustrate a point. As inconvenient for you as it is, you obviously are in love with the girl."

I slowly lowered my wand away from him, still feeling highly on edge.

"You know, if the Dark Lord wins eventually she will be killed. A creature like that has no place in his society, even if she is a pure blood." He seemed to study my facial expression.

"What? Did you think you could keep her locked up forever as your personnal pet? Think about it, Draco. After this war every witch and wizard will be made to obey him. Miss Lovegood is not one to renounce her beliefs to save her own skin." I began shaking my head 'no' at him, knowing that I didn't want to hear anymore.

He stepped closer and took hold of my shoulders to make me listen. "She will refuse to change her alliegence and then she will be tortured to death. And, trust me Draco, to be young, pureblooded, and beautiful like her will not fall to her advantage when they decide on the methods. You need to decide right here, right now where your allegiance falls. You cannot have it both ways. You need to decide right now whether you are willing to die for this girl or let her die for your beliefs. Which way is it?"

At that point I realized what Snape had been doing and why he had the wand and, despite everything I had been raised to believe and mostly still believed in, I knew what I had to do. What it came down to was this: a world full of intermixed muggles and magic was annoying and wrong, but the idea of a world in which Luna didn't exist...well, it was easy for me to say that I would take up with the stupid muggles, thank you.

I paused for a moment and looked down at my sleeping Luna's sweet and trusting face. "What do you need me to do?" I asked him and, in doing so, gave him my answer.


	11. Chapter 11

I couldn't believe what I was about to have to do. Every step I took was one of dread. Accepting the mission Snape had given me was the most insane thing I had ever done. I tried to keep my breath normal and look calm, even though I knew that the hand I used to hold my very wand was trembling. I had to do it, there was no other way and I knew that my plan was the only way I could succeed. I felt Luna's hand at my arm as I we walked up the steps and I knew that I needed to be what what she deserved. Before I could even reach the door, however, my mother was already practically running out to greet me.

"Draco! Oh, my son, I've missed you. Snape sent me an owl earlier telling me to expect you." My mother said as she hugged me. As she stepped back, she looked at Luna with a very curious expression that I couldn't quite read. It wasn't one of hatred, which would have been enough for me except in this situation. In this situation I needed my mother not to be indifferent or even okay with Luna. I needed my mother to love her.

"Hello, mother." I replied with a smile. "There aren't any death eaters here who might see Luna, are there?" I asked, knowing mother wouldn't want another scene like the one that happened the last time we were here with Aunt Bellatrix.

"No...well, just your father." She said, still looking more at Luna than at me. Luna was giving her a shy smile from halfway behind me. It was very cute of her, I thought. At least she was paying attention to my mother instead of some wackspurt or gnome supposedly hiding somewhere.

I led Luna inside and my mother followed us, closing the large doors to our estate. I walked up the stairs and to my mother's sitting room, knowing that no one was likely to intrude upon us there. Mother followed wordlessly and sat on the couch across from us.

"Mother, the reason that we've come here is because I need to talk to you about something very serious." I took Luna's hand from it's place beside her as she looked about the room in her usual otherworldly state. "What happened with Aunt Bellatrix was terrible. But I had to do it."

I watched my mother's grimacing expression, being very careful in my conversation. My plan had to work for Luna to live and for my plan to work my mother had to buy this hook line and sinker. "I don't know what happened and I probably never will but I love Luna. I don't want to have to worry about the Dark Lord remembering that I have her and deciding to make a playdate with the other death eaters to kill her one day. The bottom line that I want you to remember is this: I am your only son and I will be the only one to carry on the Malfoy name."

"Yes, Draco, I am aware of that. What are you getting at?" She asked, tone serious and gaze locked on the place between Luna and I where I was holding her hand.

"I need your help. I need to know how much you love me, mother."

"Draco, you should know better than to have to ask me that." She answered, nervously taking a tray of tea cups from a house elf and pouring some into the ancient china in front of her. I watched anxiously as she poured the first cup full and and then the second. There was a wordless code that I could read if I paid attention and I desperately needed to know how many tea cups she intended to pour. Two tea cups represented almost sure death for Luna and myself, or at least a life of running. Two cups meant that she didn't view Luna as the sweet, beautiful, capable witch that I knew her to be, but as a prisoner...a blood trader...something less than a human being. But three cups meant that my plan, my hopes, my very life might just have a chance.

While I was intently watching and my mother was pouring the second cup, Luna suddenly stood up in her odd wispy white dress and boots that no one else with pair with it and walked over to the window that looked out to the field in which mother and I had watched her dance that one night. My mother paused what she was doing and watched the girl go dreamily to the window with a walk that seemed more like a ballerina's than a regular witch. Neither one of them said anything. My mother watched her for another moment as Luna traced her fingers over the window panes as if she was outlining something that only she could see there. My mother smiled and poured a third cup of tea, pushing the first one to Luna's place and then the second to me. I allowed a smile.

"Good. Then I need your help with something."

"What, dear?" She asked. I could tell that she was nervous.

"What happened to the things in Aunt Bellatrix's vault?"

"Well, she thought of you as the closest thing she had to an heir, so she had it written that it should be transferred to you, actually. It's your vault now."

This surprised me...until it didn't. Aunt Bellatrix really had loved me in her strange, demented way that I would probably be much better off without. I felt bad for having to kill her, but I didn't regret the decision. No one was ever going to hurt Luna in front of me again, ever.

"And that sword that Granger had with her?" I asked.

"Your father has it."

"Oh." I grunted. That was not good news. I looked over to check on Luna. She had sat down on the floor in front of the large window and was looking up at it as if there was something very strange on the other side. I shook my head to myself and went to collect her. She stood up silently when I touched the back of her shoulder and came back to sit with us. As she drank her tea, she held the cup wrong. I worried that her strange behavior would negatively affect my mother's opinion of her, but instead, at least as much as I could tell, my mother seemed to be almost amused by it.

"There used to be a transport passageway through that window" mother explained, more to me than to Luna "she's probably sensing the remnants of the spell." I hadn't known that, but I was relieved to find that there was a good explanation for Luna's weirdness, at least this time.

Luna finished drinking her tea and I watched as my mother poured her another cup. "Thank you." Luna offered with a smile. It was the first words that either of them had spoken to each other.

My mother smiled tightly, but didn't respond to her directly, until she firmly asks her "So, Miss Lovegood, how has my son been doing since he has been at Snape's?"

"He worries, mostly. He wants to protect those around him and his family." Luna replied in her usual airy voice.

Mother put her cup down in front of her. "And does that include you?" She asked directly, though not necessarily in a confrontational way.

I jumped in before Luna had to attempt an answer, thinking my mother's question rude. "You know what Luna means to me, mother, and that isn't going to change. The bottom line is that if you want the Malfoy name to be carried on, if you want to see me, if you ever want to have and see any grandchildren you need to help me now."

I took Luna's hand into mine again from it's place in her lap and held it there, on her lap in front of my mother.

My mother's face tightened and then, after a moment it loosened again, as if she had just bitten into something that she had been expecting to be unpleasant only to find it to be somewhat tasty. "Alright, Draco, then we will announce to everyone that she has changed her loyalties, push the fact that she is purebred, and have the wedding immediately."

"Oh, I haven't changed my loyalties, though." Luna told her. "I'm with Harry Potter, just as my father is, which is why I was taken."

"Oh." I could tell that Luna had thrown my mother off and she wasn't quite sure what to say to that.

"Listen, mother. You don't have to like it or agree, but I love her. I know that you understand. You never agree with father on almost anything but I know that you love him. It's the same thing." I tried, doubting very much that she would understand.

My mother took in a breath. "Well, Draco, the sword is in the family vault, where your father put it. You're still a Malfoy so I would imagine that you could still get in and out just as easily if you were to stop into our vault on the way to Bellatrix's that is now yours."

I stood up and hugged her for that. "Thank you."

She nodded and gave a tight smile as she hugged me back. I felt her slip something into my pocket and she whispered into my ear "you'll need this" before she released me. Then, to my surprise, she reached out and hugged Luna as well before we left.

I didn't have a chance to find out what was in my pocket until much later, but when I saw it, it told me everything that I needed to know and, in looking at it, I found myself begin to get excited about a future that I had never considered possible. A future that, as I walked into the vault at Gringott's containing my Aunt's fortune, made me smile.


	12. Chapter 12

I was nervous about taking Luna with me to the vault at Gringotts. Before we arrived, I gave her a hooded cape to conceal herself as I didn't have the means to make any polyjuice potion on me. With her face covered, we entered into the wizard's bank. Fooling the banker elves was easy, especially since I was the only one that they really needed anyways. We took the coaster to get to my parent's vault first, during which the elf gave us complete privacy. Still, Luna waited until I had guided her out of the elf's sight before she removed her white hood. As we walked I fiddled with the object in my pocket that mother had given me. Although I hadn't brought it out of my pocket to look at, I knew exactly what it was by the feel and touching it seemed to simultaneously soothe my nerves and make me incredibly anxious.

Retrieving the sword from my parent's vault was easy. My father obviously either had no idea what he had or was arrogant enough to think that no one would dare try to take it from his vault. Once I had the sword, Luna and I came to Aunt Bellatrix's vault, that now belonged to me.

I had known for quite some time at this point that Luna was a very curious girl. So when we came to the dragon that guarded my aunt's vault it did not necessarily surprise me that Luna didn't seem to fear it at all. Before I could begin to rattle the instrument that the dragon had been trained to know triggered pain, Luna had done nothing less than remove the white hood of her cape and sit on the creature's left foot, as if it were a comfy chair. She then began to carry on a very one sided conversation with the brute. I panicked and braced myself for a fight with the monstrous animal, but none came.

"I'll wait for you out here." Luna simply said as she petted the dragon's leg. I looked at her like she was the insane person that she obviously was.

"You're not staying out here alone with this beast!" I demanded, walking over to tug her away, if necessary.

Luna wouldn't budge. "He's in pain, Draco. He won't hurt me." She turned back to the dragon. "Will you be staying in this region, sir? Or do you plan to go to find your family?"

"He isn't going anywhere, Luna. He's staying here to protect the vault."

Luna stood up and walked up to me, giving me that infernal look that she gave me that she probably knew I couldn't manage to say no to. I hated that look. It was a mixture of understanding and pity and innocence that made me feel worse than any words could ever accomplish. I wondered if she did that on purpose, when she wanted something. If she did then she didn't want things often...thank Merlin. There was no getting used to that look. I was somehow going to have to manage to release the damned dragon from the damned vault. As if I didn't have enough problems. Stupid dragon.

I huffed out a defeated breath, wondering when I had become so incredibly whipped...and by a girl that was supposed to be my prisoner! I nodded my head and thanked Merlin that no one was here to see me now.

"I'll be right back." I sighed, going into the vault to retrieve the object in question. I didn't exactly know what it was supposed to look like. I did know, however, not to touch anything before discharming the multiplying charm on all the coins and jewels. It only took a moment. I knew the charm Aunt Bellatrix had used. Still, it took me quite some time before I was finally able to identify what the object was that Snape had described. Even then, I hadn't been sure until Luna refused to hold it for me on the way out of the vault, saying that it "felt evil."

I had to talk to a few different workers at the bank for some length of time before I was finally able to arrange for the stupid dragon to be removed and sent to Ireland, which is where (according to Luna) he apparently wanted to go. Not surprisingly the bankers looked at me like I was insane. Honestly, after so many months of being with Luna all the time I was beginning to wonder the same thing myself. It was better to arrange it with the elves than leave it to Luna...she had wanted to fly the beast out of the bank. I chuckled at the hilarity of the idea, as if the brute could have even managed that alive!

We now only had one more mission: go to Hogwarts and find the lost diadem of Ravenclaw. Snape was the head master. He could take us there, but first we had to go back to his house to meet him.

"Luna?" I asked as we walked through the city in silence.

She turned her head to let me know I had her attention.

"I've been wanting to talk to you about something." I continued quietly, becoming nervous.

"I thought I was sensing wackspurts flying around here." Her tone was one in which I genuinely couldn't tell whether or not she was joking.

"Luna, I'm betraying everyone in my family. Everything that I've ever believed. Everything...just everything."

Her look turned to one of pity. I hated it. "I just need to know how you think of me. What am I to you? Your friend, your kidnapper, what?"

"If you were only a kidnapper, Draco, I wouldn't be alive right now."

I was beginning to feel more and more frustrated by the second. It didn't help that it was beginning to lightly rain. "Yeah...but what am I, then? Am I evil to you?"

Luna looked down to her feet and gave a shy smile. "Do you remember when I told you about the bubble theory?" She asked, instead of answering my question. "The real term for it is the Chaotic Inflation Theory. The theory goes that our whole universe is inside of something like a bubble and that there are other bubble universes all around us...there's more than anyone could ever count...I imagine that, from the outside, it would look something like the surface of my bubble bath."

"What does that have to do with anything?" I pushed, perhaps a little more rudely than was necessary with Luna.

"Well, it gives perspective to things, I think. From my place inside our little bubble, you're nothing like evil. But I can only see you from the inside. I don't know what we would look like to anyone else."

I opened the door to Snape's house and she walked in front of me into the living room in which Snape sat waiting. I shoved the sword and chalice over to him quickly, glad to be rid of them, and took Luna by the hand upstairs. As we were walking away, I thought that I saw Snape grimace at me. It almost looked friendly. Odd. I wondered if he knew what was going through my mind just then. My occlumency skills certainly were no match for his. My hand wouldn't leave my pocket and the contents of it consumed my mind.

It was still early, but the rainstorm had come in and as we reached the room that we had been sharing, the bottom fell out. Lighting flashed and, for a moment, illuminated everything in the room before going dark again. I stood toward the door as Luna unclasped the long white cape that I had given her to wear out to disguise her. She shook the little bit of rain out of her hair and I suddenly felt a strong urge to either take her right then or go to find some privacy for myself. Then she did something that she hadn't ever. Turning around to face me again in the dark room she slowly walked up to me and stared. I breathed in heavily, taking in the fact that she had only left about an inch in-between us. That shouldn't have bothered me. We had been sleeping together in the same bed, spooning even. But for her to come up to me like this, I sensed, must have meant something else. Did she trust me? Did it matter? Her self preservation instincts where never exactly top notch.

"I like our bubble." Was all she said in her sweet, soft voice that sounded almost closer to a whisper than to real words. I felt her hand at my shirt, dampened by the light rain. Any self control that I had flew out the window. I bent down and kissed her sweet lips that tasted so much like Luna...honey and wildflowers and nothing like anything that made sense, but like everything that was too good to be. She tasted like a warm spring afternoon. I knew then how much I loved this witch, no matter how little sense it made and that I probably needed to tell her that before one of us got killed from one of these idiotic missions for the Pothead's cause that Luna believed in so ardently.

I reached out my hand to the side of her face and ran my hand through her long beautiful hair. She gave me a shy smile and took a step forward, as if she knew exactly where this was going and was just waiting for me to make my move. I gathered her up and carried her with her legs halfway around my hips over to the bed. I kissed her as I walked to the side of the mattress and gently deposited her down onto the satin sheets.

"I love you." I whispered in between heated kisses.

She broke away for a minute at the statement and I watched her bright blue eyes light up and pale cheeks turn to a lovely rose as the recognition of what I had just told her sank in. I brought the hand that wasn't caressing the back of her head back to my pocket, feeling the object that was there and thought of taking it out right then.

Luna snapped me back into reality with an urgent sounding "Draco!" Before I even knew what it was that had her so alarmed, she had grabbed the wand off of the night stand and shouted a curse to something that seemed to be directly behind me. I turned around to see what was going on and felt the blood immediately drain from my head.


	13. Chapter 13

The dark, smokey figure behind us seemed to incase the entire room and probably the entire inside of Snape's house. It roared like a locomotive coming at us and showed me pictures that I would have never wanted to see. It loomed over us as if it was death itself until, just as quickly as it had come, it vanished. I sat up, startled and quickly began straightening my clothes as Luna did the same. We ran downstairs for Snape and a million scenarios that I had nightmares about ran through my mind. Had Voldemort found us out? Was Snape dead? Was Snape really ever telling me the truth at all? Was Snape trying to kill us? When I reached the study, I immediately got my answer.

The thing that I had brought...the chalice or whatever... it seemed to be causing the smoke from the fireplace to rush outwards into the study and around Snape in such a way so as he plainly could not breathe or see out of it. He stood frantically swinging the Sword of Gryfendor in the direction of the chalice for only the first moment I saw him and then he fainted for lack of air. I didn't know what to do. He would die if he didn't get some air soon, but what if Lord Voldemort knew somehow of what he was doing? What if I helped him and then it gave me away to the dark Lord? Could I risk it?

While I was frozen in place and trying to work it out I barely even saw Luna as she ran past me straight into action. Before I could stop her she had rushed to Snape's side and grabbed the sword from his convulsing fingers as he lay dying in a smoky heap. Before I even had time to blink she had raised the sword up over her head with both hands and swung it unto the chalice on Snape's desk. It clinked as it broke apart and immediately all of the dark looming smoke was sucked out of the room and back into the fireplace as if by a vacuum. No sooner had the chalice broken than Luna had knelt back down to the floor next to Snape, lifting his limp head and trying to fan him some fresh air.

It was to no avail though. Snape's heart wasn't beating and no matter how I tried for a pulse there was none. I turned to Luna and took her hand, gently tugging her to her feet.

"It's no use, Luna. Snape's dead. We've gotta go."

Her eyes were as large and full of surprise as usual and I couldn't read into whether or not she was very upset. There was no time for any of that. I had no idea of whether Voldemort could sense that a horcrux ad been destroyed or had some way of knowing who did it or where and I had no intentions of taking my chances of something like that. Luna and I had to leave. Now. I felt her hesitation as I tugged at her to follow me when I began to run, but only for a moment. I grabbed the sword and rifled through Snape's desk to find the wand I had dug out from Dumbledor's grave. Finally muttering an "accio wand" spell I was able to locate it and no sooner did I had both in my right hand than I pulled Luna out of the room with the other.

The cold night air that was usual for April stung my lungs as we ran. We couldn't use any form of transportation that could be stopped or searched, after all, that was how Luna had been kidnapped in the first place, off the Hogwarts Express. Now that she had destroyed a horcrux, they would certainly go through the trouble to find her again. I had desperately wished that I had a batch of polyjuice strong enough to last for a ride to Hogwarts though. Even on the train it was a several hour ride from London and on foot, especially on some of the terrain between London and Hogwarts, who knew how long it would take us to reach the castle? Still, every step we took was one more between us and the certain death that loomed for us at Snape's place. I found a secluded alleyway and stopped, trying to catch my breath and giving Luna a chance to catch hers. Sitting down, I decided to take stock of the belongings I had on me. It wasn't much. We had enough coins, of course, to live comfortably for a year or more, a fifteen minute or so batch of polyjuice potion, and that was it. Immediately, I knew what we had to do.

I used the polyjuice on Luna and me we went immediately int the store father and I had purchased our wizarding tournament tents and sporting supply from. There I picked up everything I thought we would need as quickly as I could, practically throwing it all into the hands of the store's owner as I went. Now I was all in whether I wanted to be or not. Whatever happened after this point, Voldemort would have to die if Luna and I were going to have a chance to live. That meant that I had to keep going on what Snape had told me. I had to somehow get to Hogwarts and find that other horcrux, plus whatever other ones were out there that I didn't know about. Snape had only told me so much and I had never really pushed for more information. Now he was dead and Luna was polyjuiced to look like some random red head off the street. Without Snape there was no easy way to get to Hogwarts and I couldn't even guess how long it might be, so I loaded up on as much supplies as I could. After all I was no outdoorsman and I never had enjoyed what some referred to as "roughing it".

We got out of the store and back into the alley just in time and I quickly handed Luna's cape back to her and pulled the hood far over her head in an attempt to hide her identity. Then I apparated us out of London into the countryside as close to Hogwarts as I was able, though I knew that it would take several days or even weeks to get to the actual school from there. For the night, however, I was much too tired to start trekking. By this point it was nearly midnight and all I wanted to do was set up the tent, curl up next to my sweet little loon, and go to sleep. As I worked with my wand to get the tent set I noticed how Luna wondered around in the open field in the night. The rain had stopped...or maybe it had never rained here as it had in London and the moon was out in full.

Then Luna, as if nothing bad had happened tonight at all, began to twirl around and dance. And as I watched her dance beneath the full moon, I was sure that I had never seen anything so beautiful before in my lifetime. Every strange, unexplainable thing about what Luna was doing at the moment only made her more beautiful to me and all the horrible worries I had seemed to melt away off my shoulders and into the moonlight. I walked up to her and offered my hand, spinning her around and offering her a partner, however awkward I might be, in the carefree dance. Before long I found myself holding her closely as we swayed to the music on the small radio and I tilted her chin up to look at me. I kissed her there under the open moonlight, holding her close and allowing my tongue to claim her as I wanted to in every sense. She never denied me and I reveled in the knowledge that she would allow me such an intimacy.

My kisses traced down her jaw and I felt her hand come up to the back of my white blonde hair. I reveled in the feeling, knowing that she was just as caught up as I was. Quickly and without thinking, I put a hand under her legs and lifted her up so that I was holding her as we kissed and I felt her smile into our kiss. Merlin, whatever it was about her...her smell...her taste...the feel of her soft, smooth, sweet skin...drove me to the brink of madness. For a while I didn't have to think of everything going on with the war. For while, maybe it could just be the two of us, Luna and I. I carried her over to where she had sat the blanket down outside of our tent for star gazing and then laid her down on the warmth of the quilt. I didn't break away from kissing her. I couldn't...she was simply too intoxicating for me to have the ability to stop, even if I had wanted to.

But there was one coherent thought that ran through my mind that was worth stopping, if only for just a moment. I reached into my pocket where I had been keeping what my mother had slipped to me and I couldn't help but smile. I halted our kiss for a moment and looked down at the woman who had managed to shift my entire world. Luna was so different from anyone else that I had ever known. Never once had she really asked anything of me, but then she hadn't really ever needed to. She just had this way about her that made it so that she had no need to argue or nag...because whatever it was that I knew she truly needed or wanted I just needed to give to her. If she wanted for the idiot Potter to win the war then fine, I would betray my up bringing, my family, and pretty much everything else that I had ever known just to help ensure that happened. I hated Potter, but after being with Luna I knew that he had to win because Luna had to live and she had to be happy...not kept as anyone's prisoner. She was too unreal of a creature to be degraded to that.

I took one last heavy breath as I brought the three hundred year old ring out of my pocket. As I looked into her mystical blue eyes I had no doubt that I was doing the right thing. If there was anything that I had ever wanted in my life it was this little fairy like creature that lay underneath me with her large surprised eyes and beautiful mouth that drew me in. I wanted to remember just how she was at that moment- breathing heavily to catch her breath from all the kissing, her heavy eyelids, her soft, small, knowing smile, and her beautiful pale skin. I had gone to school for years to study witchcraft and wizardry, but she was easily the most magical thing that I had ever seen.

I struggled for breath and for the right words to say. "Marry me." I breathed out in more of a whisper than in words. "Please." I huffed out, hoping that it would do. I knew that in so many ways I wasn't being fair to her. She had never gotten to experience another man to compare me to, but I couldn't bare the thought of allowing another man near her. She was mine. I would do anything for her. I loved her and she was just _mine_. I'd kill any other man before I would let them come near her.

I watched as the twinkle in her eyes actually became brighter and, although she didn't say a word, I could tell from her look what her answer was. I kissed her lips once again as I slipped the ring on the appropriate finger of her left hand, trying to get across all of the emotion that I was feeling to her. She wound her arms around my neck and I kissed her even more deeply, laying her back once again onto the quilt and unbuttoning her dress. I kissed a slow trail from her lips over her jawline to the little bit of her neck under her right ear. She shuddered when I got there and I filed that new knowledge away in my mind. I could feel one of her little hands on my upper back and the fact the she was hanging on to me in such a way drove my desire even harder. I stayed at her neck for a while, thinking of how sweet her skin tasted and how graceful of a neck she had. Everything about her was graceful and beautiful in a way that no one less than a goddess should have any right to be. As I was kissing her neck I allowed my left hand to settle on her left breast over her dress as I used my right hand to twiddle with the shoulder of her dress.

I was trying my best to go slowly and not come off as too aggressive. I didn't want to remind her at all of the time I had almost taken her by force when she first stayed with me. With everything that I was taking from her and everything she was trusting me with that no one else in their right mind would I at least wanted to make sure I gave her a first time that she would always remember and never regret. With everything else I was cheating her out of this was the one thing I knew that I could do better than some other bumbling idiot that she could have chosen had she been given the freedom to do so.

I could tell that she was nervous. Her cold hand that touched my cheek trembled and it made me feel powerful to have the ability to invoke that kind of emotion in her. Very little scared Luna... torture and even death didn't, but my touch...that seemed to do the trick. I wondered whether she was afraid of me or of the act. Leaning back up to her face, I kissed her lips reassuringly once again instead of pushing down the shoulder of her dress. I wanted to make her feel comfortable, even if she was unable to completely relax.

"I promise I won't hurt you, Luna. I love you." I breathed quietly into her ear. For a moment didn't do anything more. I just ran my hand over her left check and the other through her pretty hair, taking the opportunity to get a good look at her face and eyes. Her usual surprised expression wasn't in her eyes at the moment, but was replaced by something else, apprehensiveness? After a moment though she seemed to grow more comfortable and I waited until I saw a resolution come back into her eyes before I continued. She wasn't the first virgin that I had ever slept with; she was the forth, actually. But I had never taken things this slow or been so concerned over the girl's wellbeing. I felt, in a way, like I needed to prove my worthiness and love to her.

After another moment I felt her slowly reach her little hands down my side to the hem of my shirt and begin to lift it up the sides of my ribs. As she went I could feel her trembling hands barely just touch along my skin, as if by accident, and the simple touch from her was more pleasurable than any part of any experience I had ever had with any other witch. When the shirt reached my neck I helped her get it over my head and toss it away. She had seen me without a shirt on before, even naked on one occasion when I first brought her up, but her eyes inspected my chest as though she had never seen what it looked like. For once, my usual cockiness about my six pack and chiseled chest failed me and I watched her expression, hoping that she thought me handsome, but unsure. After all, Luna was so different who knew what she might find attractive or not?

"I love you too, Draco." She finally said, after a long while in which she almost looked to be holding her breath. She leant up to kiss me again on the lips and I knew that everything about tonight was going to be okay. I kissed her with everything I had and everything that I had been holding back from her. Then I backed away just enough to lean her up and unbutton the back of her dress. It didn't take but a moment and she was laying underneath me in nothing but her nickers and bra, her pale and beautiful skin gleaming in the silvery moonlight. Merlin, my little fairy was beautiful! As I kissed down her collarbone and touched her smooth skin I couldn't get how lucky of a man I was out of my head. Luna looked and felt like nothing short of a goddess under touch and the silently pleasured expression I was able to put on her face excited me even more. I finally let my hands roam and immediately they both went to feel her voluptuous curves along her sides and hips before I brought one back up to the underside of her to gently unclasp her bra. As I took it off I kissed her lips once more to help her feel a little more comfortable to the adjustment, remembering other girls who had become self conscious at this moment. As I slipped a hand down to touch one I felt a sharp intake of breath from her as we kissed and I used my other hand to rub at her shoulder and the side of her head to try to reassure her.

Luna didn't have large breasts, but I thought they looked perfect for her smaller size. I smiled to her and thought about how I wouldn't want to change a single thing. Everything was beautiful. She was beautiful. So far she had been very quiet but when I pressed my lips to one of her nipples I could her her gasp loudly in enjoyment and again I felt proud to be able to make her feel good. I licked and gently nipped and sucked at her nipple and fondled her other breast as her hands pressed at my bare back and then switched and did the same to her other perfect breast. Everywhere her skin was as sweet as honey and smooth as fine silk. I trailed down her ribcage and then her flat belly with my lips as I began to run my fingers under the waistband of her I could get anywhere with taking them off though she sat up and tugged at my jeans, signaling to me to take them off first and not leave her as the only one without any clothes on. I made quick work of removing my jeans, thinking of them as annoyance to get rid of before I could have what I want. I went ahead and took off my dark green boxers too, hoping that it would make her feel less awkward about me taking off her underwear. Her cheeks held a lovely blush and her eyes carried a curious sparkle to them as she reached out to touch me for the first time. It was a cool night out, but I didn't worry about some things like other guys might, my body felt on fire from touching her. As soon as I felt a few fingertips on me I huffed out a breath, trying hard to keep myself calm and in check. For a moment I let her explore and touch me as she liked, letting her know with my eyes how she was making me feel, but soon I laid her back down and leant over her again, not wanting her to cause this to be over too quickly.

I slowly slid down her underwear, waiting until I had them all the way off and then kissing my way back up her smooth legs before I ran my hand to touch her in her most intimate of places. Gently, I parted her knees with one hand and laid my body between them, leaning down to kiss the inside of her thighs. I felt her shudder as I moved my mouth over to her center and put my tongue to work with pleasuring her in the way that no other man ever had and ever would but me. I knew that most girls didn't have orgasms their first time and I made a goal of making an exception of my beautiful little nymph. I wanted to make her see some stars that weren't in the open night sky above us and I worked mercilessly to achieve that for her. I felt her hands grasp at the back of my head and could hear her quick, sharp intakes of breath even if she was silent during the whole thing.

When she finally did come I knew it because she immediately began to cling to me and clinch in the tell tale way. I smiled into her center and lapped my tongue at her for another moment after it was over and then came back up to kiss her lips with her own taste on them as my fingers took over the work. I went slowly, keeping to the outside for a bit longer before very gently slipping one inside her as far as her virginal barrier would allow. She took in another sharp breath and I knew that I was on the right track to making her feel good. As I slipped a second finger in I couldn't help but notice how incredibly small and tight she was and, although the prospect only excited me more for my own pleasure, it made me worry a little about hurting her. No other girl I had bedded was quite this tight. Still, I kept moving and trying to be gentle with my fingers as I kissed her lips. When I couldn't stand waiting any longer I broke our kiss and waited for her to look me in the eye. I wanted to see every part of her expression and know every indication of pain for what I was about to do.

The tension hung all around us as I positioned myself and she stared at me, wide eyed and trusting with her hands on my bare upper back and her knees to either side of me. I went in slowly, stopping at her barrier and then leaning down to kiss her on the lips and brush her cheek with my palm in a soothing gesture to try to help compensate for the pain. I felt her body tense and her breath catch as I broke through, but she didn't shed a tear like the other girls I had bedded. As soon as it had been broken I froze and tried to remain perfectly still within her to allow her to adjust to my size and to the pain. It only took her a moment to relax against me again.

"Are you okay?" I whispered in question to her, hating that I had just put her in pain, even though I knew it was a one time necessity.

She nodded with a contented smile and I waited another moment to begin moving slowly and gently within her, still amazed at her tightness. I continued this way until I felt her hips start to try to move with me and then I knew that it was okay to speed up a little. I didn't rush though, however much my body screamed at me to. I knew that there would be plenty of time for that later, when she was healed. Right now I just wanted to make this experience last for as long as possible. I wanted her to be able to feel my love for her. What finally did me in was the loving look on her face as she reached a hand up to my cheek and gently said my name. I carefully laid down, still inside her but careful not to make her carry my weight. I rested like that for a time, not willing to leave her yet until I finally did move off and pulled her up against me, wrapping my arms around her tiny body and kissing the back of her head like I was accustomed to at night with her in front of me.

I could see her smiling as she lay there, me propped up on my elbow behind her. I wondered what she was thinking and then laughed a little to myself at how different I was, how different she made me, to care what was going through her head. But, as Robert Heinlein wrote in one of those crazy muggle books Luna loved to quote, "love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own" and I could care off little else lately but to try to make Luna happy. I had turned my entire world over for her and still it seemed like nothing at all in comparison. Then I heard her faintly humming she familiar tune and I smiled, feeling my skin tingle all over once more.

"I see the moon and the moon sees me

the moon sees the love that I want to see

so God bless the moon and God bless me

and God bless the one I love

Over the mountains over the sea

back where my heart is longing to be

please let the light that comforts me

shine on the one I love

I see the moon and the moon sees me

down through the leaves of the old oak tree

please let the light that shines on me

shine on the one I love

I kissed the rose and the rose kissed me

fragrant as only a rose can be

please take the kiss that comforts me

back to the one I love"


End file.
